PROBLEM 

Ukrainians resettling in the U.K. face barriers to accessing, housing, employment and other services 

Ukrainian refugees in the U.K. are predominantly women (85%) and their children, who face a plethora of different challenges while settling into a new country. Primarily there is a language barrier which affects all domains of life, from schooling to employment. Half of the Ukrainians residing in the U.K. face barriers to accessing work, whereby their qualifications are not recognised.

While many Ukrainians remain living with their designated hosts, this six-month government scheme called Homes for Ukraine ended financial support after six months, resulting in many families facing homelessness. 45% of Ukrainians experience barriers to accessing private accommodation, due to a lack of a guarantor or reference.

INSIGHTS 

Our group led desk research, exploring the situation for refugees and asylum seekers globally and locally. We also interviewed more than 20 different organisations, from charities, UN agencies, local authorities, volunteers, and refugee networks and conducted seven in-depth interviews with Ukrainian refugees. Through these engagements, we built a holistic picture of the situation and gained empathy for the different stakeholders and their unique challenges. 

1. Cultural Interpretation

At the onset of a crisis, there is a vacuum of reliable information. People turn to friends and informal networks begin to grow. But we noticed that sharing of lived experience through care and context enables trust.

2. Community Contact 

When arriving in the U.K. the refugee experience can vary widely. From being matched with a helpful host, to being isolated in a hotel. This first point of contact is pivotal to a positive experience, and at the same time, there are many volunteers who want to provide support.

3. Connective Tissue 

As services become more operational at scale, they grow disconnected without effective referral and coordination. But we also found that many refugees were unaware of helpful U.K. services, relying on informal networks which are vulnerable to exploitation.

DEVELOP 

How might we develop a service concept for newly arrived refugees in the U.K., so that they can access information and services in a culturally specific and connected way?

From co-creation, we were able to conceive six service concepts for feedback and validation, this culminated in a generative ideation process and our final idea, Context, which was then further prototyped and validated with stakeholders. 

Introducing Context 

This browser extension helps refugees settle in the U.K., by overlaying crowdsourced cultural interpretations of information onto existing websites.

Allowing a community of individuals and organisations to provide insights and tips based on their lived experiences. The content providers post videos to the platform and use tags to link them to particular topics. As users navigate across the internet looking for information, our browser extension is working in the background to pool relevant videos into their feeds. This gives users much-needed support by distilling and simplifying often complicated and overwhelming information.

Context challenges you to reimagine how we organise the internet.

It's like if Grammarly offered culturally interpreted advice, instead of spelling and grammar checks. As you navigate the internet key terms are highlighted and tagged to helpful videos, voice notes and explanatory notes to help you understand what you're looking at.

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