A chatbot helping asylum seekers prepare for their interviews

Facilitate asylum applications

MarHub is a brand new chatbot developed by students at the Berkeley Haas School of Business, at the University of California, to help asylum seekers through the complicated application process to become an official refugee and avoid passing by smugglers. This process can last up to 18 months normally. Finding the right information for the asylum process is not easy. And although most asylum seekers are in possession of a smartphone, a lot of information is missing or out of date. MarHub was designed to help these asylum seekers. Marhub is also expandable, so new information can be added quickly to make it a useful information center.

"A gap to fill"

The concept of MarHub was born at the end of 2016, in response to the challenge launched by the NGO Hult Prize, concerning the best initiatives to help refugees. The development team quickly realized that there was a gap in the market they felt they could fill. MarHub will initially be available via Facebook and later on WhatsApp. You have to know that there are many organizations that are fighting the global refugee crisis. One example is the German startup that uses digital fingerprints to help refugees open a bank account. There is also a non-profit organization that offers an educational program for refugees to obtain degrees. If not, what other creative ways can we put in place to help refugees and facilitate the asylum process?
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