Refugee Pal is a comprehensive mobile application designed to provide aid and assistance to refugees residing in British Columbia. The application is compatible with various operating systems, including iOS, Android and web, as well as diverse screen sizes, offering users a seamless experience regardless of their device of choice.
The app is developed using the Dart programming language and the Flutter framework, a dynamic and powerful combination that enables us to create a smooth and efficient user interface. To accelerate the development process, we leveraged the benefits of FlutterFlow, a no-code builder that helped us streamline our workflow and expedite the app's delivery.
Furthermore, Refugee Pal's backend infrastructure is built on Firebase, a secure and reliable cloud-based platform that allows us to manage and store data with ease. With its cutting-edge technology and robust features, Firebase ensures that the app functions smoothly and efficiently, providing a seamless experience for our users.
Repository for web app version
The digital resource hub is designed to provide refugees in British Columbia with easy-to-understand and categorized information. It includes a comprehensive library of information with various categories such as employment, learning English, housing, culture and community, settlement, financial, healthcare, legal services, and mental health. Each category has subcategories and detailed topics with links and redirects to relevant and reliable sources. The platform aims to solve multiple problems faced by refugees by providing them with valuable information that can help them with challenges related to employment, mental health, a sense of belonging, and more.
The healthcare professional directory enables refugees to find healthcare professionals who speak their language. Users can search for healthcare professionals including doctors, psychologists, and counsellors based on their language and location within Metro Vancouver. The information provided for each healthcare professional includes their name, clinic, website, contact information, registration status, and more.
This feature aims to tackle the problem of language barrier faced by refugees in healthcare proven by studies, preventing them from seeking mental health support and more. This problem has a simple yet intuitive and effective solution.
The Newcomer’s Map provides over 40 useful locations sorted into categories such as food banks, places of worship, libraries, and refugee support organizations. This feature helps refugees better understand their surroundings and find places that provide services and programs to help them with integration and resettlement.
Refugee Pal is designed to be easy to use and navigate, with numerous accessibility features. The app is available in many different languages using the Google Translate API provided through FlutterFlow and has an easy-to-navigate and minimal user interface. Refugee Pal was built with its users in mind, available in both IOS and Android devices. With the help of Firestore offline support, almost all of our features are offline accessible.
The connect dashboard of our app brings refugees a set of communication based features. It also consists of the healthcare professionals directory feature, where they can find doctors, psychologists, and therapists that speak their language.
This feature allows refugees to connect with settlement workers, case managers, mentors and other helpers through chat, group chat and video call. Settlement workers can view information on a refugee's profile, including their refugee status, date of arrival to Canada, and country of origin, to save time when helping refugees.
The Q&A feature that allows refugees to post questions within different forums separated in the same categories as the digital resource hub and map feature. Settlement workers or other qualified professionals can reply to their questions, providing refugees with answers to their questions.