The ‘Telegram for Humanity’ bot is automating thousands of manual requests for aid with increased speed and accuracy, saving the organization nearly 200 hours of manual processing each week. This is expected to free up Step with Hope’s 96 volunteers across 20 centers to increase their efforts of direct assistance for refugees, providing food, hygiene kits and access to psychologists, lawyers, and child welfare specialists to those in need.

“Members of our volunteer team are refugees themselves, and the ability to help other Ukrainians is our main priority,” said Alla Semenchuk, Operations Director of CFHT. “It’s critical and tremendously challenging work to find and manage the distribution of necessary resources for refugees and internally displaced people. The customized bot that Automation Anywhere and CFHT have built for Step with Hope is both refugee-friendly and volunteer-friendly—it makes application processing quick and transparent, saving human effort and strengthening the organization’s structure.”

“Technology is all about human enablement,” said Neeti Shukla, Social Impact Officer and Co-Founder, Automation Anywhere. “In collaboration with CFHT, we are proud to support this humanitarian effort with life-saving technology that can make a difference to the millions of Ukrainians that have been displaced by conflict.”

“CFHT and Automation Anywhere’s collaboration to build a custom bot for Step with Hope has enabled us to provide humanitarian aid to a greater number of internally displaced people in Ukraine,” said Inna Kampen, Director of Step with Hope. “Our volunteers and the families we serve are enduring the unthinkable. Having a responsive, user-friendly bot to interact with vulnerable families who are requesting help allows the volunteers to use more of their valuable time providing direct support, while spending less time processing and validating requests manually.”

“Partnering with Automation Anywhere to build custom technology solutions for humanitarian organizations fulfills the core mission of the Center for Humanitarian Technology,” said Dean Hamilton, Founder and Executive Director of CFHT. ” Using the Automation Anywhere technology to improve access to food and medicine in the middle of a humanitarian crisis shows the versatility of the platform and the company’s commitment to social impact. This collaboration is just the beginning of what is sure to be a long and fruitful partnership to solve technology challenges faced by humanitarian organizations across the globe.”

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CFHT and Zendesk’s first collaboration is the development and implementation of a customized technology solution for Step with Hope (Крок з надією), a Ukrainian humanitarian organization serving internally displaced people and refugees. CFHT replaced Step with Hope’s manual telephone call center with a Telegram messaging-based operations center powered by Zendesk’s ticketing system.

“CFHT and Zendesk’s partnership and collaborative solutions are making a direct, ongoing impact on Step with Hope’s operations and the displaced people we support,” said Inna Kampen, Director of Step with Hope. “Having technology and operations experts really get to know our organization, our challenges, our needs – and then build a custom solution – has enabled us to help more families in need with greater efficiency and accuracy.”

The custom intake system—designed, deployed, and operated by CFHT leveraging Zendesk technology licenses—streamlines a previously time-consuming, manual process, increasing the humanitarian capacity of Step with Hope. This frees up volunteers to spend more time matching requests to appropriate evacuation centers and work directly with internally displaced people and refugees. In July alone, over 1,200 families received food aid by requesting support through the CFHT platform.

“Working with Zendesk to provide a customized technology solution for Step with Hope has been a deeply meaningful and successful first mission for the Center for Humanitarian Technology,” said Dean Hamilton, Founder and Executive Director of CFHT. “CFHT was founded to provide technology and operations solutions just like this—helping to make humanitarian organizations already on the ground doing incredibly important work even more efficient and impactful.”

Step with Hope operates 20 evacuation centers across Ukraine that provide humanitarian aid, including evacuation support and the distribution of food, hygiene products, and medicine. The organization has received hundreds of new requests a day from families in need of humanitarian aid resulting from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, a conflict which has created 7 million internally displaced people and 13 million refugees to date. Urgent requests for food and other necessities are now received by Step with Hope using streamlined, scalable technology and processes.

“We’re grateful to the incredible volunteers at CFHT for connecting our products to the organizations operating in Ukraine that can use them to streamline the processes by which they provide essential aid,” said Alana Ramo, Director of Zendesk’s Tech for Good program. “We look forward to partnering with CFHT on future projects designing customized technology solutions for nonprofits operating in Ukraine and around the world.”

CFHT and Zendesk are excited to provide more organizations with formalized processes, supported by enabling technology platforms, and to maximize the impact of volunteer and charitable resources, helping to fulfill CFHT’s mission and Zendesk’s social impact commitment.

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The founders of CFHT began collaborating in March 2022—brought together by their commitment to help Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced people. While working with NGOs operating in Ukraine and nearby countries, the team of volunteers noticed a consistent need for technology and operations support. CFHT was developed from the idea that nonprofits provide vital humanitarian aid and frequently react to catastrophic crises with little time to plan how to work most efficiently or leverage technology.

“We realized there was an unaddressed problem space where humanitarian aid agencies work in crisis situations with ad hoc processes—they understandably do not have the capacity to introduce technology into their operations,” said Dean Hamilton, CFHT Founder and Executive Director. “We bring a unique blend of technology expertise, deep experience operationalizing ad hoc processes, and a passion for iterating imperfect solutions to optimize the humanitarian efforts of our partners.”

The mission of the Center for Humanitarian Technology:

CFHT’s mission is to develop and operate generalized technology solutions – that address common problems faced by humanitarian NGOs – to improve the collaboration, efficiency and effectiveness of our humanitarian NGO partners.

In the first few months of operation, CFHT has focused on building a partner base of humanitarian relief partners, technology solution partners, and volunteer expertise, including our initial partnership with Agape Care International, Wilson Perumal & Company, and Swivl.

“I really value the mix we have at CFHT—where ideations about what’s possible meet the practicality and willingness to get simple solutions in place,” said Caroline Suni, CFHT founding member and project manager.“ As an organization, we can lay the groundwork to use technology like graph databases to revolutionize humanitarian aid logistics while working in parallel with partners on the ground to meet their operational technology challenges on a much different scale.”

For more information about the Center for Humanitarian Technology or to learn about being a CFHT partner or donor, please visit www.cfht.org or contact Jeannie Elliott at contact@cfht.org.

CFHT gives special acknowledgement to the hard work from our Ukranian volunteers, including Alla Semenchuk, Emily Dorisio, Oksana Kharchenko, Ira Medvedieva, Natalia Revak, and Ivanna Trotskovets.

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