Voices Of Venezuela

Refugees face a difficult time accessing services, worsened by COVID-19.  We can help them access solutions by delivering information through a chatbot and messaging service.  We have funding to produce 72 videos answering immigration questions and reducing xenophobia.  These videos can be leveraged as answers to questions for a messaging service.  With our initial testing, it’s not uncommon to receive over 100 messages an hour, demonstrating the demand for the service and need for funding to maintain it.  With it we can send out broadcasts, address individual needs and questions, and gauge needs and demographics.  We have very high engagement rates that open up the possibility of doing sponsored posts from organizations focused on the well being of the community and would serve as a way to sustain this project for the long term.  It could be replicated and scale to serve more of the 70 million displaced people worldwide.

There is no one source of reliable information for refugees.  Misinformation wastes their limited resources and puts them at markedly greater risk during a pandemic.  Venezuelans constitute over 5 million of the refugees worldwide, with almost 2 million in Colombia.  A pandemic such as COVID-19 affects them even more than the rest of the population, as they are not linked to support services.  Many Venezuelan refugees around Latin America whose situation had been improving are no longer able to support their families due to COVID-19 leaving them without income, housing, or protections offered by governments.  Many are trying to return to Venezuela, which is alarming because of the health and legal consequences of traveling.  We are based in Bogota where the Venezuelan population is approaching a million.  Without a reliable information source, this population is at risk of receiving incorrect or malicious, false information.  We are building a way to keep them up to date and understand what options are available to them.  As the network grows we will be able to further leverage it for creating positive change. 

The Venezuelan refugee community heavily uses Facebook and Whatsapp because they are free on most mobile plans, so we focus on them.  Earlier this year we tested an informational explainer video and infographic which reached well over half a million people despite us having only 200 followers at the time.  That single post grew our following almost 10-fold.  Since then engagement is averaging over 20 times that of other organizations working in similar areas.  This engagement combined with the ability to help hundreds of people an hour through our messaging service prove the efficacy of our concept.  With funding we can build a chatbot backed up with a pool of real people answering questions and broadcast the most important information to our quickly growing community.  This model forms a circle that reinforces itself from social media to SMS and back to social media, each time reaching more and more people.  Through strategic partnerships that are beneficial to the refugee community we can turn this into a long term solution by offering communication services to the refugee community.  As we build the communication network we can use the data to adapt to other platforms as the community and technology evolve. 

The majority of our team is part of the target population.  A big problem for Venezuelan immigrants in Colombia is that information is not always accessible or easy to understand, causing a loss of time and money trying to figure out things that a local would understand easier. This lack of accurate and easily understood information makes them a target for scams like fake insurance or IDs, and susceptible to fake news about humanitarian aid, such as when protests erupted in the beginning of quarantine in Bogota after Venezuelans were maliciously told to gather in the city square and wait to be seen by government officials for aid.  This incident is the perfect example of how a lack of reliable information puts refugees at risk and can cause conflict with host communities.  As we respond to their individual comments and questions, we can identify group needs and solutions and help to counter bad intent.

Information and communication are as essential as medicine to combat a pandemic.  COVID-19 will likely last much longer in Latin America.  Because refugees in the region are no longer able to support themselves some are seeking to return to Venezuela, where they may at least have family and a roof to live under. This brings significant risks including bringing the disease back to a country that can not handle day to day medical matters, let alone a pandemic. We provide refugees a reliable source of information, and can significantly improve their chance for successful integration

As a media company we are leveraging existing technology to produce massive engagement by problem solving rather than news creation for the Venezuelan refugee community.  This has given us an engagement over 20 times that of other organizations working with this population online, some of which we are partnering with.

We use WhatsApp Messaging with Facebook and leverage each to grow the other.  When we add in a chatbot based of data collected from questions asked and answered we can answer 1000s of people's needs a day and reach millions of people a month.

Chatbots and social media are commonly used by WHO and many other organizations to reach their audience.  We are just combining it in a way to build a community around it.

If the way that information for immigrants is provided changes to fit their necessities and it is delivered in an easy to understand format, they will be able to adapt to the situation faster and more effectively. Immigrants will also be able to avoid and more easily identify fake information or scams in their host communities.  We are already having and impact with our test, because our community feels included and heard.  Based on the messages we are getting refugees are using the information and making more informed choices.  They have also told us that we have been giving them what they need in a way that serves these needs. 

Curently we have 7000 subscribers with tens of thousands more interacting with our content.

We expect to be helping 800,000 subscribing accounts within a year.

Within 5 years we expect to be helping 2+ million or more expansion to other refugee populations.

Produce local content supporting refugees for each country in Latin America.

Expand to other refugee populations in Europe and Asia.

Partner with the most effective international organizations working with refugees to help them reach their audience more effectively

Core funding is our biggest problem right now, we have self funded from the sale of art and donations from our founders.  We currently have 7 people working full time and need core funding to build out the solutions we have found and tested.

As we expand we will have additional cultural and language barriers with other populations.

Initially we will apply for grants to build our service.  But as the community around it grows we can partner with other organizations, government agencies, and private business who are working to help refugees.  By using sponsored content from them we can continually fund the information service, messaging service and chatbot updating.

The barriers with other markets can be reduced by hiring local people for research, content production, and customer service.

Full time -8

Part time -3

Yes, we have been working with the Venezuelan immigrant community and other vulnerable groups in South America for several years.  We have focused the majority of the last 2 years on Venezuelan refugees, providing humanitarian aid, providing economic opportunities, fighting xenophobia, producing content and researching their needs.  Over half of our team fit the population we are working with and others from the host country.  We have very diverse backgrounds that range from photojournalism to medical professionals to managing communications during a project to put a satellite into space.  We have people with the needed tech skills, audiovisual production, audience building, and marketing skills to make this happen.

We have project funding from USAID and the Inter-American Development Bank to develop and produce informational content to help Venezuelan immigrants integrate and content to reduce xenophobia.  We are also partnering with other organizations such as ACTI/VOCA, Colombia Sin Fronteras and Todos Somos to reach larger audiences.

We provide information that they find valuable.  What is valuable to them is based on their needs which they tell us and which is proven by the engagement with the content.  Our beneficiaries are Venezuelan forcefully displaced people.  Our customers will be organizations working with this population that want to reach them more effectively.

We have several possible revenue models for long term sustainability.  But the most promising is sponsored posts/advertising for other organizations.  The initial building will be done through grants.

We need partners to scale our solution internationally and provide information and connect refugees to resources.

WHO, UNHCR, and other large organizations working with refugees.

We are focused on helping refugee populations access services and getting their needs met.  Our current solution is for the 5 million Venezuelan refugees but it can be scaled to reach other groups internationally.