trellyz Human Educational Mesh Network

COVID-19 has caused schools to close, and millions of people to lose their jobs, with Latin America and the Caribbean region being the most heavily impacted worldwide. Under-resourced populations, particularly those living in rural areas, people on the move, and women, have been dramatically affected. 

RefAid provides educational content through micro-lessons offered in the mobile app, which will effectively be delivered through a Human Educational Mesh Network. The app works offline so can be used by Digital Envoys, those with intermittent connectivity and devices, to disseminate micro-lessons to people with low or no connectivity to their community. RefAid app also provides access to critical information about services and resources that support the overall well-being of users. 

With global scale our solution would reach millions of under-resourced communities, providing them with access to education and support, to develop the skills and competencies they need to thrive.

Communities in low connectivity environments across Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly those living in rural areas, people on the move, and women, lack access to quality education and therefore experience limited job opportunities. 

Migration is on the rise in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is made evident through the increased numbers of people migrating from Venezuela and arriving in host countries such as Ecuador and Peru. People on the move experience low connectivity, and are often out of school and employment for long periods of time, so they are left without access to quality education or job opportunities. 

There are at least 77 million rural inhabitants in Latin America and the Caribbean that are unable to access internet services, with 58 million women living in rural areas. They are particularly impacted by the skills gap due to many contextual and cultural challenges. We aim to address our target populations by creating an accessible and feasible solution, and keeping equality and inclusion at the heart of our design. 

The skills gap has been exacerbated further due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with many jobs lost and classrooms closed. This, in addition to low connectivity, creates added burdens on under-resourced communities. 

The RefAid mobile app is a multi-lingual, central repository of trusted social services and educational content, from government, NGOs and service providers. RefAid uses a holistic, cross-sector approach to service delivery and provides target populations access to micro- lessons and available social services for those wishing to build their opportunities in life through education.

The RefAid App works both on and offline and stores social services and educational content to make them accessible in rural areas, or low and no connectivity environments. The few members of the community that have connectivity and devices will act as ‘Digital Envoys’ and  store service information and educational micro-lessons for offline availability, to serve as resource hubs for their communities. Providing them with these tools will broaden access and opportunities for remote learning, and address the need for flexible education across the region. With our app, and the human educational mesh network, we will guarantee access to quality education for our target under-resourced populations, using innovation to close the learning and skills gap. 

We work with experienced implementation partners and their networks across the region to recruit local organizations and increase the number of services and educational resources available to those in need.

Our target populations are communities within low connectivity environments, across Latin America and the Caribbean focusing on Ecuador and Peru.  

These countries have large portions of unconnected communities and are therefore under-served in different ways. We have chosen to focus on Ecuador and Peru, as they are two of the regional host countries for people migrating from Venezuela, and therefore have large populations of people that are on the move, are refugees or seeking asylum. With this in mind, people on the move and refugee communities are often in remote and hard to reach areas, or close to borders, and lack basic mobile/cellular infrastructure and therefore connectivity.  

There are rural environments within Ecuador and Peru, where connectivity can be intermittent or not available at all. Additionally, the high poverty rates across the region mean that people have little income and so are unable to afford internet connectivity or smart devices.  

While the majority of our target populations do not have mobile devices or available internet to access education, there are always some digitally connected, or intermittently connected members of each community (whether due to having downloaded content at their last wifi spot, or because they have their own internet provider). They can serve as the Digital Envoys - making their device and internet access a distribution channel to others.  

The focus of our solution is to provide people across Ecuador and Peru with quality learning and employment opportunities that would otherwise have limited or no access. The people within our target populations are under-served and under-resourced and therefore struggle to access these opportunities. The micro-lessons available in our app will help the target populations use their own agency in developing the skills and competencies they need to thrive in the 21st century. 

Being able to access educational content in offline environments addresses the needs of the populations and breaks down existing barriers to learning. The app is available in Spanish, and several other languages, increasing the accessibility. Micro-lessons will ensure learners can access concise training material that works within their time constraints, on their chosen device, and without internet connectivity. This will also enable users to access information they need and become more informed to make better decisions about their learning and well-being.

In addition to the micro-lessons, RefAid also provides information about critical services to traditionally unconnected communities. This will help to address the wider needs of the populations, as they can receive support for their overall well-being, with services including food, health, legal aid, and more. Our Human Educational Mesh Network approach extends the benefits to the most under-served populations, by allowing Digital Envoys to learn and teach others, ensuring equal opportunities for all.  

As we plan to expand our solution to cover Ecuador and Peru, we will work closely with target populations to develop and improve our approach. Holding focus groups and workshops where populations can provide feedback on RefAid, will help us to understand their needs, and engage them throughout the implementation process. We also want to work closely with teachers and educational institutions to encourage their creation of educational content while including them within the process of designing the tools and resources for students.

Our technology-enabled solution addresses the challenge of providing access to education and better opportunities, for under-resourced populations across Ecuador and Peru. 

Our approach will implement educational content for students, which will not only improve their education, but also increase their job opportunities and reduce the skills gap. Community members acting as Digital Envoys through the RefAid mobile app will ensure everyone in low connectivity environments has access to quality education. 

Our re-imagined approach to supporting under-resourced communities will provide them with information about critical services to improve their overall well-being, in addition to education that will help them thrive. 

RefAid is currently in 30 countries including Europe, the US and Morocco since its launch in 2016. Over 7,500 organizations (NGOs and government service providers) are part of the network using the platform to map, manage and publish their services to the public. RefAid has been used by migrant and refugee communities around the world, and we are now hoping to expand in places where access to services is most critical, such as in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

RefAid is tested and deployed, and the app has become an established tool for people around the world to use. This is further demonstrated by the fact we recently won the Padre Arrupe Human Rights Award.

We are configuring the trellyz Content and Communication Management System to include a Learning Management module where vetted educators and other service providers can add micro-lessons to be made available through the app. 

The RefAid mobile app utilizing Digital Service Envoys is a unique and original approach to bridging the digital divide as it provides information about critical services, and an education, to traditionally unconnected communities. Due to the innovative dissemination of service information through Digital Envoys, people within under-served communities can rely on access to information and education through those who have devices and/or connectivity. This will create a catalytic effect and exponentially increase the number of people touched by or accessing universal education offered by micro-lessons in the app, as well as direct services and resources to improve their whole well-being. 

The RefAid mobile app works offline, in many languages, and this provides a significantly improved approach to reaching those living in typically low connectivity environments, such as rural populations and people on the move.

These offline capabilities provide consistent access to universal education, driving innovation to develop people’s potential to learn, and broadening access and opportunities for remote learning and training. The app will also provide continued access to a range of social and public services, allowing them to get the help they need, receive better opportunities and improve their overall well-being. 

RefAid also innovates the localization of aid through a network of dedicated and embedded national and local partners with local contextual knowledge, for example, our partner, Diocesan Delegation of Migration (DDM) in Morocco. Our model leverages strong, lean international NGOs for their resources as capacity building partners in the development of networks.

The trellyz platform is a cloud-based, Software as a Service (SaaS) model that is scalable and affordable. It consists of a web-based portal, that works on all modern browsers, for service providers, government, NGOs to create and publish content into the mobile app, and collaborate and coordinate responses with each other. The mobile app is lightweight and works on Android and iOS (iPhone) phones and works offline. Our solution offers scalability in times of increased traffic. AWS provides automatic load balancing for increased traffic. The system has granular roles and permissions and allows administrators to easily create users, roles, groups. Users can be assigned multiple roles.

The mobile app, RefAid, is a geo-location based app with categories of services and educational modules that can be geo-fenced (available to people in certain locations) or made available to anyone with the app.

The Learning Management module is built on the existing RefAid platform app, and the learning micro-lessons will be accessible via the app similarly to the services information. The human educational mesh network will enable the nodes, people with intermittent connectivity and devices, to synchronize content when online, earn badges or score points for accomplishing learning goals, and participate in surveys to help improve the system and create additional and relevant content. Nodes can also track the number of times micro-lessons have been accessed by the user or shared with other learners, providing valuable data in the platform’s data dashboards.

The RefAid platform and mobile app is currently being used to help migrants, asylum seekers and refugees across 30 countries across Europe, the US and Morocco. RefAid works with over 5,000 service providing organizations (NGOs, nonprofits, governments) that serve people on the move, and use the platform to list, map, manage and publish their services to end users in the mobile app. RefAid has become an established tool for people around the world to use during their migration journey. 

The RefAid solution uses a mobile app technology that works offline that removes the need for consistent connectivity and electricity to allow community members to access and relay service information and educational resources.

RefAid was awarded the third edition of the Padre Arrupe Human Rights Awards, granted by the University Institute for Migration Studies at Comillas Pontifical University (IUEM). The award recognizes individuals and institutions for their work in the defense and promotion of human rights in the field of migration and refuge. RefAid was given the prize for helping migrants and refugees to make safer journeys, through the mobile application that informs people on the move about the location of different services. Below is a link to an article in Spanish about the award. 

Religión Digital “El Instituto de Migraciones de Comillas premia el periodismo de compromiso y el trabajo de ayuda en red” 26/05/2021 

Press articles about RefAid:

Apple App Store “Meet the Developer - Rescuing Refugees” 23/08/18

Geospatial World "Location-based Refugee Aid app helps in tracking nearest relief services available," 13/6/17 

JRS Europe "Southern border: Technology at the service of migrants," 28/7/20 

UNHCR Innovation Service "Is your app the best way to help refugees? Improving the collaboration between humanitarian actors and the tech industry,"14/10/16

The main risk with using technology for this solution is privacy or security concerns. We take several steps to address and reduce these risks, particularly when it comes to data protection. 

In order to protect the people using the app, we do not require a name or any validation of email addresses, so users are able to remain anonymous.  The platform and app are GDPR compliant and achieve the highest level of data protection. GDPR also empowers people to request that their data be erased and RefAid will comply with any request to erase relevant data.

trellyz does not share any data with third parties. Our data is securely hosted in Amazon Web Services hosting facilities located in the United States and Europe depending on the location of the service provider and the user accessing the app, and we are continually improving according to privacy policy updates in countries.

For public facing data collection on a mobile app, i.e. surveys, we collect information based on the user’s location and any optional profile information. We do not share any information collected with the service providers and government agencies that use our platform other than aggregated and de-identified data for planning and decision-making.

Organizations - our primary direct relationship is with service providers. In a sense our product/platform is B2B. We support aid organizations, government and other service providers to deliver services to their clients. Our trellyz platform is used by more than 7,500 organizations today (with an average of 2-3 people per organization). In one year we will be adding at least another 250 organizations, and their networks. In 5 years we would expect to operating in more than 50 countries with a total of more than 10,000  core organizations using the software, and more than a total of 50,000 individual organization users of the software.

App end users - while we do not market directly to, or interface directly with end users, they are our primary beneficiary through the organizations that interact with them. We currently have 250,000 app users. In 1 year we would expect to have 1 million end users – either using the app directly or benefiting from access to the app through human nodes, community leaders or organizations. In 5 years we expect to have at least 20 million people directly using the app. 

While this project is intended initially to serve under-served communities across Ecuador and Peru, we expect to further expand the project across other countries in Latin America and Caribbean, in addition to communities across Sub Saharan Africa. 

Our solution will have a transformational impact on the target populations across Ecuador and Peru by extending the reach of digital educational content, through the Human Educational mesh network approach.

trellyz will focus on the following impact goals for the next five years: 

1. Reduce the barriers that prevent communities within Latin America and Caribbean from reaching key learning milestones and accessing job opportunities.

2. Create and implement educational content to strengthen practical skills, competencies, and learning opportunities for our target populations

3. Guarantee access to quality education for people in low connectivity environments

4. Provide access to life saving services which will support the overall well-being of communities

To achieve these, we will: 

1. Configure the trellyz platform and RefAid app to ingest and publish educational micro-lessons

2. Identify educational content creators 

a. Organizations that can create relevant and appropriate micro-lessons to be published in the app

b. Import lessons from some of the leading Open Educational Resources (OER) sites through open source/APIs

1. Work with NGO partners working across Latin America and Caribbean to determine types of the initial educational content

2. Outreach to NGOs (local, national, international) and if appropriate, government education ministries, to build our network of service provider partners 

a) To add their support services to the app 

b) To recruit other service providers and educators

c) To add any educational content

d) To get their assistance in marketing of the app to their clients

1. Support partners in educational content creation and promotion of the app to target populations

To measure our impact, we will track usage metrics on the trellyz service provider platform and the RefAid mobile app. The trellyz platform will collect key information about usage across the Service Provider Network, and the RefAid app will collect and log data, with respect to the interactivities built within the micro-lessons.

Our solution will not only ensure continued learning and a quality education for underserved communities in Latin America and Caribbean, but will also equip them with the skills and capabilities to prosper in future work opportunities. 

In order to measure impact and progress in this project, we plan to use many Key Performance Indicators that will be designed in conjunction with our partners. These indicators will be in addition to our standard measurements:

• Number of service provider users on the platform

• Number of educators uploading educational content to the Learning Management module

• Number of services available through the platform on the app

• Number of self-content micro-courses available on the platform

• Number of downloads of RefAid app

• Number and location of services information accessed

• Number and location of organization information accessed

• Locations and populations served

• Number of micro-lessons share digitally (through text or email)

• Number of micro-lessons given by learners to other members of their community

7 - 4 full time, 3 part time

Shelley Taylor, the founder and CEO of trellyz, is a technology veteran from Silicon Valley with 25 years of experience of building large scale technology platforms and 7 years building mobile apps. She is the inventor of web User Interface language and has developed a unique approach to product design for low literacy and vulnerable populations. This is proven by her creation of RefAid, which has been used by refugees and migrants from dozens of countries for 6 years, and was recently awarded the Padre Arrupe Human Rights Award. This expertise and experience demonstrates her understanding of the people we serve, and clear ability to successfully scale this project.   

trellyz, is a US based private company, that has created a service provider platform with a mobile app for real-time, location-based discovery and communication. With a track record of helping communities, in particular migrants and refugees in the US, Europe and Morocco, our platform specializes in allowing users to filter services based on their need and demographics. The company has a history of rapidly scaling its operations through network building processes and collaboration, coordination and communication tools for service providers. Our team’s knowledge areas include software development, responsive product design, international crisis response, disaster risk reduction, protracted displacement management, and humanitarian aid management. 

We plan to get support and buy-in from the community by working closely with service provider partners already working with our target populations that will work as great partners due to their established understanding and trust amongst communities. 

trellyz was founded by a black American female, with native American heritage and the management team of the company is majority female. We use this lens and lived experience to encourage diversity and inclusion, in hopes of creating greater equality in all of our projects and partner relationships. Through years of experience with RefAid in regions where certain minority groups face persecution, the trellyz team has become acutely aware, and highly practiced, in taking precautions that protect vulnerable populations and promote diversity and equity. 

The baseline research and work we will conduct during the pilot stage of this project, and the quarterly evaluation and monitoring, will take into account the voices of those who are particularly marginalized, with people directly from our target populations. This will help us to improve the results and impact through the design, implementation and adaptation of RefAid, to ensure that their needs are addressed appropriately.It will also ensure that we continue our development with diversity and inclusion at the forefront.

We are applying to the TPrize Challenge to join a powerful network of leaders across industries and sectors, that will help us to build our existing network and to form relationships with potential partners, collaborators, and funders. We would also like to receive mentorship and support from the community experts and key industry leaders, to help us develop, improve and scale our solution over time. 

With funding from the TPrize Challenge, we can make the platform available and free to all stakeholders, and then work in parallel to find additional funding partners and other ways of creating sustainability. This could include forming potential partnerships with businesses and brands that would benefit from association and exposure (sponsorship or marketing) to the many people RefAid will be serving. The TPrize Challenge would help us to execute our plan to expand our existing solution, to implement RefAid across Latin America and the Caribbean, starting with Ecuador and Peru.

Funding for promotion and marketing will aid us in reaching our intended audiences - both service providers and target populations, increasing the success of the project. As our target populations are often hard to reach, the TPrize Challenge could guide and assist us to find the most efficient and effective modes of communication, as well as making sure that the format of content (service information and educational modules) aligns with the customs and beliefs of the Latin America and the Caribbean region.

We would love to have financial support for our project, and that could come from direct funding or introductions to other grant organizations or venture capital investors. This funding support would help us to reach our intended audiences, both service providers and target populations, so that we can help as many people as possible. This would be achieved through marketing campaigns and communications, across a range of different platforms (social media, flyers, advertisement, etc). We have grown exclusively through viral word of mouth, and as well as that has gone, we could benefit from help with marketing, social and global media strategy and implementation.

We would appreciate any introductions to NGOs, service providers, government funding and service delivery organizations, so that we can continue to grow our network. Ultimately, this will help us to increase the services listed on our app, and the help available to our target populations. We would also like to connect with potential private sector partners who may have ideas or relationships about how best to get the greatest expansion to our potential customer base.

MIT faculty and initiatives would provide an incredible resource to trellyz, both its access to brain power and community of partners. We would love to create global conferences for change agents in NGOs, government and other critical stakeholders in the social service supply chain.

Future Planet Capital would be a great partner from a fund standpoint, along with their strategic partners and network, and access to human capital from leading academic institutions and the centers of innovation that surround them.

Clorox, as a global company with the dedication to positive impact, could offer us insight into how large companies may be appropriate partners for the work we are doing. Ultimately, sustainability of social service delivery in LMIC countries will rely on partnerships with the private sector, and finding ways they can benefit from exposure to the populations we serve.

We would love to partner with Amazon’s AWS Disaster Management group because it is aligned with the work we do around providing our app to populations and NGOs in crisis. We would also love to have AWS credits.

We would like to partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation because of their global networks, and their connection to NGOs and other partners who could become part of our social service provider network would be a tremendous synergistic alliance.