The Resource Finder for New Immigrants in Philly

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  Team members at work building out decision trees with Neota.

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  Presenting an example of the decision trees at the heart of this tool.

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  Showing an example of the final report generated by this resource finder for newly-arrived immigrant community members.

Inspiration

This challenge was brought by the Newcomer Immigrant Learning Collaborative, a cross-sector collaborative comprising providers in the mental health, medical, education, law, and child welfare systems, who work together to support newcomer immigrant youth and their families. There are many newly arrived immigrants in Philadelphia who cannot access particular services and benefits due to immigration status. Nevertheless, there are organizations in Philadelphia that provide services to immigrant families, across a range of immigration statuses, languages, and neighborhoods. These organizations need a tool that compiles information about their services into one place and provides an interactive, intuitive, and linguistically accessible way to filter relevant resources for the individual seeking assistance. Technical inspiration came from existing projects, such as a Neota-based project for legal services in South Carolina, and local Pennsylvania resources, such as Youth Matters Philly and Pasa La Voz.

What it does

This tool guides newly arrived immigrants or service providers who support them through a simple series of questions and leads to a final report with relevant, accessible programs for the newly-arrived immigrant to contact. The tool is interactive and intuitive with translation through Google translate for immigrant community member use.

How we built it

We built our solution through the no-code legal platform, Neota. Neota allowed us to create variables and organizational databases to store information about organizations and to provide output of relevant organizations, based on user input. User input is gathered through a questionnaire, and the program utilizes the input to adjust and distribute the output efficiently and quickly, without storing user input and personal information. In the case of outputs, our logic team created variables of each organization and then designed a simple three-step validation system. The three-step validation system consists of three decision trees to simultaneously validate the input information. In this process of validation, the program checks input information against the criteria in the decision trees to see if any organization in the database meets the requirements. Through these checks, our program efficiently delivers a report of appropriate services, no matter the circumstance. Our formatting allows the clients to correct any fields they left blank and to check their options to adjust the services they would like to receive.

Challenges we ran into

A challenge we faced was client confidentiality since this is a significant concern for undocumented immigrants. With the advantage of the no-code Neota platform, we were easily able to combat the problem of data collection and tracking by ensuring that the data entered by users (IP, personal information) is not saved in the system.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the accessibility of the tool, not only for immigrant community members but for providers as well. We prioritized making a resource hub that was secure and structured. In addition, we listened to the client organization’s request for a program where they can update information about the services as conditions change. Our program is integrated with Google Translate, to offer language access for a wide range of immigrant community members. While working in coordination and communication with the Newcomer Immigrant Youth Learning Collaborative, we balanced gathering all necessary user input information with ensuring that users are not left vulnerable while using the software.

What we learned

Our team learned that the impact of the innovation should define success, over the innovation itself. We did not receive first place, but it was never a loss because we found rewarding confidence in knowing our solution is a fully-functional tool that can offer all newcomer immigrants entering Philadelphia safety and support.

What's next for The Resource Finder for New Immigrants in Philly

The Newcomer Immigrant Youth Learning Collaborative service providers and the newly-arrived immigrant community members who they work with are going to test this first version of the app, in multiple languages, across computers and mobile devices. The project team will continue to refine the project, coming together periodically to make revisions and update the list of resources, and several members of the Newcomer Immigrant Youth Learning Collaborative will also learn how to update program information through Neota. Once this work has been refined, we are eager to share the Resource Finder with immigrant-serving organizations and immigrant youth and families throughout Philadelphia, and the goal is to share a fully functional resource with the Philadelphia community by March 2023!

Built With

• neota