Technology helps the homeless rebuild the senses – the Observer

The Community Life and Peace, which supports the homeless of Lisbon, is testing a digital platform to better accomplish the goal of "reconstruct senses of" life ” and the belief is that technology can help to coordination between organizations.

The idea of creating a tool that would replace the exchange of information done mainly by paper and phone calls resulted in the aidHound, which integrates up to mid-October the experimentation phase of the project Smart Open Lisbon (the SUN) and that will participate in the WebSummit Lisbon, one of the main events in the world of innovation.

The president of the Community Life and Peace (CVP), Henrique Joaquim, said to the agency Lusa that the platform serves to "take care of the caregiver" — the volunteers-in addition to detailing the profiles and trajectories of homeless people, to facilitate the intervention of technical and "rebuild the senses of life". "And instead of walking the multiply and the overlay approaches and interventions to the same person, we may, perhaps, coordinate better," he added, indicating that the CVP is not intended to be the only organization to use the application.

"Not to say that it delete the other, but perhaps includes, is organized in terms of a goal faster that is: how much faster we can make that person in that situation, the better. The less costs and less resources we have to spend, the better," he argued. There are currently registered 500 volunteers and "a few good dozens of people in a situation of homelessness".

In the version still in test, it is already possible to volunteer to make the report of the round, record how many meals were provided and the most important: how many contacts establishes, how many referrals does and that signs make," said Henrique Joaquim, explaining that a signaling means that a volunteer has indicated a person for support, to be managed by the technical team.

Is that the goal of changing lives continues, but now in another way. "In the past, there we got, but here there has been efficiency gains are very large, with good results for all parties, in the first place for people in situation of homelessness", said to Lusa.

Pedro Pimentel, one of the authors of the aidHound, repeats that you are not inventing anything with this application directed to the non-governmental organization. "Basically it was very much a work of observation that was already made in tools, more archaic — phone calls, paper, Excel — and carry it all for a process that would make sense in the digital," explained the partner of the advisor information technology I AM.

In the list of advantages is the ease of consultation of the records, for example, by another team of volunteers or for the management of the CVP, allowing a "help more assertive, more informed", and the optimization of interventions. With the filling out of profiles of homeless people, including the location where they can be found, you can post alerts several, added Pedro Pimentel, referring to the fact that the application includes areas for training and to track the trajectory of people who have gone to have professional support.

in Addition to concepts from the Management area, the aidHound forced the inclusion of the other inherent in the Law, because privacy is also a priority. Thus, a volunteer can be deleted if it fails to comply with the confidentiality and the proper use of the collected information, which can only be used to help the person with the staff of the PLC, noted the head of the institution, referring to the collaboration with the National Commission for Data Protection.