Voices Of Venezuela

There is often a disconnect between the information needs of the migrant community, resources available to them, and community support.  We have built one of the most engaged online communities on Facebook (currently 50x the NGO average) and are currently averaging 19% weekly growth, including a rapidly growing Q&A service. This success derives from our ability to deliver information that problem-solves for the community.  We have been focusing on Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, which has the most Venezuelans outside Venezuela, but with funding and partners can scale to other countries in the region and/or replicate for other displaced populations worldwide.  We fill hundreds of migration-related information requests daily.  A key issue is that less than half of migrating Venezuelans have “legal” status, and they need help to obtain needed and other identification documents.  Our cross-platform service helps explain the processes, builds community support, and leads to successful integration.

There is no effective broad-based and reliable source of information for Venezuelan migrants.  Although 95% of the target population doesn’t have computers, much info is still not mobile friendly.  Without legal status there is hesitancy to ask authorities.  Also, misinformation wastes limited resources and puts them at markedly greater risk for exploitation and scams.  

There are around 5 million displaced Venezuelans, with the vast majority living in Latin America, and around 1.8 million in Colombia alone.  To reach them, we focus on Facebook and Whatsapp, which are free on most mobile plans and are heavily used by this community.  We have reached hundreds of thousands of people with migration related info and with our high engagement can create buy-in for solutions involving identification and access.   

We are setting up partnerships with both government and migration-related NGOs to connect the migrant community to the solutions that are available to them.  This effort is facilitated through our contract with USAID and the Inter-American Development Bank as winners in the Juntos Es Mejor Challenge for our media solutions to help immigrants integrate into host communities and reduce conflict.

Our solution primarily serves the Venezuelan migrant population, and by extension their host-communities, through delivering information and media that reduces friction and allow migrants to comply with the rules and counter the perception that they are not trying to fit in.  The majority of our implementation team is part of the target population, and all media creation involves them.  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 more easily.  Responding to around 20,000 questions has allowed us to identify group needs and solutions and help to counter bad intent.  Our solution gives them a place to ask questions and get their informational needs met and even when they don’t know the right questions to ask we can still broadcast information with a high open rate.  We are building partnerships with other organizations and policy makers in order to facilitate two-way communication with the migrant/refugee community.

There is a great need to increase the availability, reliability, and clarity of information that enables digital authentication and ID services for displaced persons.  The solution involves building trust with government agencies, community buy-in, and effective information delivery by believable sources.   Our Venezuelan-staffed team and solution format address all these issues.   The technical format for information delivery involves accessing mobile phones through widely available free user apps.

As a data forward media and communications organization we are leveraging existing technology in new ways to produce massive engagement focused on problem identification and solutions for the Venezuelan migrant community.  This has increased our reach and growth many times that achieved by other organizations working with the same population.  We have the most engaged community among any "competitors", but for us "competitors" are really potential partners.

In just two months through only word of mouth we have had 4000 people use our WhatsApp messaging service which has sent more than 50,000 messages sent back and forth.  And while messaging and social media are commonly used by many organizations to reach their audience, our format is set up as a positive feedback loop.  The more people that use the messaging service, people can their questions answered and then watch a explainer video on Facebook that then keeps getting more engagements and shares.  This then gets more people contacting us through WhatsApp again to get their questions answered.  This and our commitment to the migrant community to look into each person’s informational needs and respond builds community support in a way that is unique and builds trust.  At this point we are responding to 500+ informational requests a day on average and have had thousands thanking us for helping them get their permits, find missing family, prevent people from being scammed, return lost documents, talk suicidal people down, and be a friend migrating Venezuelans can trust and talk to.

Migrants will be able to better adapt to their new situation if they receive clear, focused, and timely information that is more effectively delivered to them on the networks they frequent the most.  Their engagement is crucial to any solution that affects their community.  Without it there is not enough momentum or support.

This can bring in the community support as well as reach a community that is migratory in nature.

Very, it uses the two platforms most used by the migrant population.

WhatsApp and Facebook are often included on mobile plans in developing countries for free.  We are working on offline resources through an application for when there are no connections.  Our solution works with low literacy as we are including voice messaging services in it and we republish information in its simplest form and people have the ability to get personal assistance which we have done for people with disabilities such as blindness and people with low literacy skills.

Currently we have 12,000+ subscribers on Facebook and 4,000 on WhatsApp with a weekly growth averaging 19%.  Funding permitting, we will expand to Peru, Brazil, and Ecuador within the year and with that we anticipate 800,000 subscribers.  

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

Expand to other countries in Latin America within the year.

Expand to other refugee populations in Europe and Asia within 5 years.

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 10 people working full time and need core funding to build on solutions that  have been tested and proven promising.  As we expand we will have additional cultural and language barriers with other populations.  We need to expand our partners, which we are currently focused on and meeting with migration agencies and International NGOs.

We are applying for project grants as well as meeting with organizations like the International Office of Migration to form partnerships that provide funding and increase our value to the migrant community.  We will also use ethical advertising to bring in additional operating budget.  Organizations like ACTI/VOCA and USAID are helping us increase our organizational capacity through creating additional partnerships.

3 Full time employees

5 Full time contractors

+ Volunteers

We believe we have the highest engaged network working with the Venezuelan migrant community.

Our current partners are USAID and the Inter-American Development Bank as funders for the media portion of Voices Of Venezuela.  This is through the Juntos Es Mejor(Better Together) Challenge of which we were first round winners.  We are also working with ACTI/VOCA for improving communications strategies and smaller organizations that are providing support for media work.  We are currently speaking with Venezolanas in Tech to assist in increasing our data capabilities as well as IOM(International Office Of Migration) to see how we can help them reach the Venezuelan community more efficiently for their multiple initiatives.

We collect data on the informational needs of the migrant community by providing a messaging service where the community can ask any migration related question they have and we will find the answer.  All this goes into a database which is then used for when that question is then asked by someone else.  We research the most crucial topics and provide easy to understand posts and videos on social media that answer these needs.  Because of the need of the community, our ability to bring this information in an easy to understand engaging way, and that we answer every single comment and question our interactions push the content viral which then reaches a large audience.  We have posts that have reached over a half million people and our post engagement rate is 50x the NGO average.  Our services form a positive feedback loop both with reach and engagement as well as with organizations to community.

Because of the high engagement of our network and its rate of growth which is currently 19% weekly we will be able to use non-invasive advertising through stories as well as promote products that solve needs of the community.  We expect to be able to be able to start monetizing this network in 6 months.  We will provide B2B services by helping other NGOs reach their target population through marketing or partnerships.  We will also be using project grants to speed up building the network and capability of our organization.  The goal though is to build a solution that is able to support itself through marketing services and B2B organizational support.

USAID and IDB grant to create media to create self sufficiency, inform, and reduce xenophobia through the Juntos Es Mejor Challenge

We have raised money on our own through the sale of art that we use in exhibitions to fight xenophobia and create media attention.

We are seeking $250,000 to expand our services and data collection/analysis capabilities across Colombia and expand into Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador within 12 months.

$75,000