STEPS

We are STEPS, please find our presentation here: link

Inspiration

Through team members in the refugee community we’ve learned that many from a refugee/migrant background often don’t know what practical steps to take them towards their goals. They are often hindered by a lack of connection to people in their chosen field. Many families also experience relationship problems as migrants from older generations have difficulty appreciating that non-traditional choices can also lead to successful lives.

What it does

STEPS is an online platform for showing refugees how others have succeeded where they want to go.Users can take inspiration and learn practical tips from a catalog of success stories. The platform facilitates connecting users to story-tellers and to relevant services such as those providing resume-writing and job finding.

How we built it

We put together a survey to validate our initial ideas. 26 responses have enabled us to adjust our focus to better match what customers are looking for.

The platform itself is a web application built using KnockoutJS - a CMS based on node.js and mongodb.

Challenges we ran into

Refugees face so many problems when choosing a career path, we had difficulty narrowing it down to one problem. Under the prudent guidance of the mentors, we decided to send out a survey to get a better understanding.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We sent out a survey to confirm our problem We then pivoted After our pivot we sent out a call to action to prove our concept, and managed to connect with a person that needs career advice! AND! We also build a prototype page

What we learned

What we think is the biggest problem is not necessarily the biggest problem the community faces. Even though the community focused on a specific problem, connecting, people like Nirary and others that we spoke to wish that they had access to information that could have helped them make better decisions. There is a large focus, even amongst our survey responders in just connecting to build a network. We have committed to ensure our platform provides guidelines for mentoring to make sure it is focused on action and next steps ,rather than just expanding your network.

What's next for STEPS

Collecting stories and mentors
Partnering with more organisations that can help our users
Building a sustainable business through sponsorship and possibly limited advertising