UNICEF – RapidFTR Application

    UNICEF correspondent Dheepa Pandian reports on how UNICEF is using technology to reunite Congolese refugee families in Uganda
     
     

    RapidFTR (Rapid Family Tracing and Reunification) helps humanitarian action workers to quickly collect vital information from children who have been separated from caregivers in disasters, and to share it securely with people who can get them help and find their families.

    This open source mobile application is used to record key information about the child’s identity, including a photo and information about their separation. The data is then shared on a central database for family members to look for a missing child. Before RapidFTR, humanitarian action workers had to use paper and fill out lots of forms which took a lot of time.

    RapidFTR was first piloted in a Congolese transit refugee camp in Uganda in 2012, was then used during the South Sudan Internally Displaced Person(s) (IDP) crisis of 2013, and, most recently, deployed in the Philippines after typhoon Yolanda and in support of the current crisis in South Sudan.

     

    Mathilde Bienvenu, Child Protection in Emergency Specialist on the issue of Unaccompanied and Separated Children with UNICEF NYHQ,  is sharing some of her thoughts and experiences with RapidFTR

     

    RapidFTR is a project that came out of Design For Unicef class in Fall 2009. I have worked with Jorge Just, Karla Calderon, Rune Madsen and Dharmarajan Ayakkad, on RapidFTR

    If you want to read more about RapidFTR these articles on NY Times, The Guardian, Marie Claire and UNICEF.