Battle has come to your house. You’re pressured to go away all you recognize and journey to a overseas land. You want meals, water, clothes, and different life necessities proper now. 

However you’re unsure the place to show within the new land. And even in case you’ve heard about distribution facilities, there might be challenges forward, together with the necessity to go to a number of facilities and stand in lengthy queues for these necessities—losing time you don’t have.

After which there are the organizations attempting to assist. They’re additionally dealing with challenges resembling figuring out and reaching these in want and understanding what to supply, which may result in losing donated gadgets, particularly perishable items. 

These are simply a number of the challenges that the tens of millions of displaced Ukrainians and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dedicated to supporting these refugees have confronted because the warfare started.

A free resolution on the go

EY, the multinational skilled companies enterprise, has created an utility that gives help within the occasion of disasters and conflicts worldwide. Often known as the Emergency Response Utility (ERA), the free cell resolution was constructed utilizing the SAP Enterprise Know-how Platform and acts as a conduit to match folks with sources.

Making the connection 

Earlier than the appliance’s deployment, there was no collective database of NGOs working in Poland. That made it tough, as talked about earlier, for refugees to find what they wanted and for NGOs to ship. 

With EY ERA, NGOs enter information into the appliance about their services and products, together with meals, hygiene gadgets, and garments presently out there of their warehouses, in addition to the areas of their distribution facilities. Based mostly on that info, a consolidated listing of NGOs has been created, which has been routinely translated into Ukrainian and could be sorted primarily based on the appliance customers’ (the refugees’) location.

Assist at their fingertips

EY ERA has an intuitive interface that makes the appliance easy to make use of. Refugees can rapidly and simply entry the appliance on their cell telephones, kind by NGO of their areas, and use Google Maps to get instructions to the native distribution facilities. 

By understanding what every middle gives at any given time, the place the middle is situated, and its hours of operation, the refugees can pinpoint their most handy and acceptable donation space to acquire the fabric or help they want. They’ll try this earlier than they head out, saving them valuable time and serving to them to keep away from the frustration of leaving a middle empty-handed. 

“Thanks for the appliance. I used to be capable of finding facilities that provide all that I would like throughout such a tough time for my household and me. It’s simple to make use of and useful, particularly the map locator. You don’t need to waste time visiting all of the facilities,” says Kateryna Karpenko, an EY ERA person.

EY ERA additionally helps NGOs by offering a car to get the phrase out about their services and products and maintaining monitor of warehouse inventory—what’s in demand—because it’s being distributed.

Going viral

To advertise the appliance, a social media and internet marketing campaign was created in Ukrainian and Polish, producing greater than 1.8 million views. The primary section of the appliance was launched in Poland in April 2022, in lower than six weeks. At present, 114 distribution facilities are utilizing EY ERA.

 “The warfare in Ukraine modified every part,” says Axel Janz, director at EY Know-how and the chief of the EY ERA mission. “Virtually each NGO within the international locations bordering Ukraine has expanded or modified its profile to successfully assist these affected by the warfare. EY ERA helps NGOs and refugees to distribute materials assist extra effectively. To start with, we launched it in Poland. Within the subsequent interval, we plan to increase its operation to different international locations.”

Based mostly on its success and objective of uplifting folks in want, EY gained the SAP Innovation Award for EY Emergency Response Utility – Contributing to the humanitarian assist for Ukraine. The 2023 SAP Innovation Awards are actually celebrating its 10^th anniversary. To study extra about EY ERA, see their Innovation Awards pitch deck and LinkedIn article.