Nationalities Service Center - Adopt a Famliy App

Who we are

Nationalities Service Center is Philadelphia's leading immigrant and refugee service organization empowering immigrants to thrive in our communities and pursue a just future. NSC provides comprehensive services to immigrants and refugees in the areas of legal protections, community integration, access to health and wellness services, English language learning classes, employment and case management programs. The Refugee Resettlement program welcomes 200 refugees to Philadelphia annually. This program provides vital services and resources to newly arriving refugees for their first three months. Part of this program requires that NSC secure housing and set up these houses for refugees prior to their arrival. This is called a Home Set Up.

What we're working on

NSC is required to provided a standard set of furniture, household goods, toiletries and food for each home set up. NSC seeks donations of these items and volunteers to assist with setting up the homes. If donations are not received, staff must use the refugee's program funding to purchase these required items and this funding is very limited. These limited funds are best suited to pay for rental assistance until refugees get their first job which is why is it important that we conserve those funds.

The Adopt a Family App

NSC is seeking the development of an Adopt a Family App where community supporters and volunteers can interface with staff directly to set up refugees' homes. When NSC receives notice for a new refugee arrival, staff will post the home setup list to the app along with details regarding family makeup (i.e. mom, dad, boy aged 8 and girl aged 4). Community supporters and volunteers can sign up through the app to donate the items. When they sign up for an item or group of items, they receive the shopping list to their phone. Those items are then removed from the app's list so others can sign up for the other items. The app will also have a mechanism to coordinate delivery of the items either to the NSC office or the home, with additional options to volunteer a few hours for the home setup. This app is similar to Sign-Up genius but it needs to be specific to NSC.

Roles

Process mapping, to learn the workflows of securing items and setting up homes

App development - front end interface for volunteers and supporters and back-end mechanisms for staff to upload lists.