Rumbo — Your Future, in Your Language

Inspiration

Rumbo was born from our own stories and experiences with immigration. Each member of our team brings a unique perspective shaped by our backgrounds, journeys, and relationships with navigating life across cultures and systems. These experiences have influenced how we understand the barriers migrants face and how we want to show up for our communities.

We know that building a future in a new country can mean navigating unfamiliar institutions, deciphering complicated requirements, and searching across countless websites for information that may not be available in your preferred language. Whether someone wants to pursue an education, find employment, gain professional experience, or access essential resources, knowing where to begin can be one of the biggest challenges.

We believe that access to opportunity should not depend on the language you speak, how familiar you are with a system, or whether you already know where to look for help.

That belief inspired us to create Rumbo, an AI-powered, multilingual resource navigator that helps migrants explore opportunities and discover pathways toward their goals. The word rumbo means direction or course, reflecting our vision of helping people find their way forward while recognizing that every person's journey is different.

For us, this project is personal. We wanted to channel our experiences into something practical: a tool that makes navigating unfamiliar systems less overwhelming and helps people recognize the possibilities available to them. Rumbo represents our commitment to building technology that serves our communities and makes opportunity more accessible.

What We Learned

Throughout this project, we explored how AI can be used to address barriers to information access and make complex systems easier to navigate. We learned that connecting people with resources involves more than gathering links or providing search results. Information must also be understandable, relevant to a person's goals, and actionable.

We also recognized the importance of multilingual accessibility as a core part of the user experience rather than an afterthought. Language shapes how people access information, understand their options, and make important decisions. Designing for people who speak different languages requires us to consider not only translation, but also clarity, cultural context, and whether the information is genuinely useful.

Another important lesson was the value of designing around people's goals. By organizing Rumbo into three pathways—studying, working or gaining experience, and understanding available resources—we created a framework that reflects the different reasons someone might seek support.

Finally, we learned that building technology for communities requires empathy and responsibility. Immigration-related information can have significant consequences, so AI should help people discover and understand resources without replacing qualified legal professionals or presenting uncertain information as fact. Accessibility must go hand in hand with trust, accuracy, and transparency.

How We Built It

We designed Rumbo as an AI-powered, multilingual resource navigator that helps migrants find information and explore personalized pathways toward education, employment, and professional development.

We organized the application around three primary user pathways:

I Want to Study: Helps users explore colleges, community colleges, trade schools, scholarships, admissions requirements, transcript information, and other educational opportunities.
I Want to Work or Gain Experience: Helps users discover internships, apprenticeships, volunteering opportunities, professional development resources, and information about work authorization and potential sponsorship.
I Want to Understand My Resources: Helps users find document translation support, DACA renewal information, legal assistance, public libraries, free classes, and community programs.

These pathways are intended to make the experience approachable by allowing users to begin with what they want to accomplish instead of requiring them to understand complex institutional systems before getting started.

Multilingual access is central to Rumbo's vision. We want users to be able to explore resources in the language they understand best, making information more accessible to people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

By combining AI-assisted navigation with a structured set of resource categories, Rumbo aims to help users move from searching for information to identifying practical next steps. Our broader goal is to make the process of discovering opportunities more personalized, understandable, and empowering.

Challenges We Faced

One of our biggest challenges was translating a broad, deeply personal problem into a focused technical solution. Immigration touches many aspects of life, including education, employment, legal services, language access, and community support. Each area has different requirements, resources, and considerations, making it difficult to address everything within a single application.

We responded by narrowing the experience into three clear pathways. This gave us a practical framework for organizing resources while allowing us to account for the different goals and circumstances of the people Rumbo is intended to serve.

Another challenge was thinking through how to make the application useful across languages and backgrounds. A multilingual experience needs to do more than translate words; it must make information understandable and relevant to people who may be unfamiliar with the systems they are navigating. We approached this as a central design consideration rather than simply an additional feature.

We also had to consider the responsibility that comes with using AI for immigration-related resources. Information about work authorization, DACA, and legal assistance can be time-sensitive and situation-specific. We want Rumbo to guide users toward trustworthy information, communicate limitations clearly, and direct them to qualified professionals when appropriate.

Finally, we faced the challenge of balancing our larger vision with the time and technical constraints of a hackathon. Building a platform that can support diverse languages, resource categories, and individual needs is an ambitious undertaking. Our focus was on establishing a clear foundation that demonstrates the problem we want to solve and creates room for continued development.

These challenges reinforced an important principle: technology designed for people must account for the complexity of their lives, not expect people to fit into the limitations of the technology.

What's Next

We envision Rumbo growing into a trusted starting point for migrants seeking opportunities and support as they build their lives in the United States.

Future development could include expanded language support, personalized recommendations based on users' goals and circumstances, verified resource directories, and step-by-step pathways that help users understand what to do next. We also want to explore ways to keep information current and connect users with reputable community organizations and qualified service providers.

As Rumbo evolves, we want to continue incorporating the perspectives of the communities it serves. Our own experiences inspired this project, but we recognize that no two immigration journeys are the same. Listening to users and learning from their needs will be essential to making the application genuinely useful, inclusive, and trustworthy.

Ultimately, Rumbo is about making opportunity easier to find. We are using our experiences, skills, and shared commitment to build technology that helps people navigate unfamiliar systems with greater confidence.

Every journey has a direction. Rumbo helps you find yours.