How The International Rescue Committee (IRC) Is Scaling Humanitarian Support With AI

[00:00:00] - [Speaker 0]
I'm incredibly grateful to the team at Denodo for backing the Tech Talks Network and helping us produce over 60 interviews a month. And if you are looking for better ROI from your lake house, this message is going to be worth hearing because Denodo helps reduce complexity, control costs, and accelerate time to insight. And it does that by connecting all of your data sources in real time. So make your lake house work harder with Denodo, and you can do that by simply visiting denodo.com. What if some of the most important uses of AI today have nothing to do with productivity hacks, chatbots, or enterprise automation, and instead have everything to do with helping people survive some of the hardest moments of their lives?

[00:00:56] - [Speaker 0]
Well, today, I sat down with Andre Heller to discuss how technology originally designed for customer service is now being used to support refugees and displaced communities across 30 countries and 25 different languages. My guest leads Signpost, which is a global digital initiative from the International Rescue Committee or the IRC. And they have already helped register more than 20,000,000 users and supported over half a million digital social work consultations. But behind all these numbers are some deeply human stories involving war, displacement, climate disaster, uncertainty, and the search for safety, dignity, and reliable information. So I wanna learn more about how Signpost evolved from some small proof of concept project in Greece during the Syrian refugee crisis, and from there, evolved into a global platform leveraging tools from Zendesk to scale humanitation support in ways that aid sector has never previously imagined.

[00:02:07] - [Speaker 0]
And this conversation today goes deep into the responsible use of AI in high stakes humanitarian environments. And my guest will explain why AI has become one of the humanitarian sector's biggest bets at a time when needs are rapidly increasing while budgets continue shrinking. But he's gonna share also why human empathy, trust, and local understanding still matter more than ever. And it's this synergy between technology and that human need that really interests me. So prepare for some incredibly powerful insights in our conversation today.

[00:02:44] - [Speaker 0]
And I personally think it offers a very different perspective on what technology can mean when it's applied with humanity at the center. But enough scene setting for me. Let me introduce you to my guest right now. So thanks for joining me here on the podcast today. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:03:05] - [Speaker 1]
My name is Andre Heller. I'm the director of the Signpost project, which is a a technology and human rights project that is housed within the International Rescue Committee, the IRC. I have been the director of Signpost for about six years during which I I grew this tech and human rights project from a proof of concept into a global program. Prior to that, I did frontline humanitarian work around the world in different armed conflicts with Doctors Without Borders, and I worked in tech briefly, and then this this role right now really is kind of a marriage of those two of those two lives that I've led.

[00:03:47] - [Speaker 0]
I love how those two worlds have collided for you. One of the things I always try and do on this podcast is get people thinking differently about technology and the impact that it can have on possibly areas that you don't associate with technology. And the International Rescue Committee was founded at the request of, I believe, Albert Einstein back in 1933. But today, you're operating a digital platform supporting refugees across something like 30 countries and 25 languages. So how do you even begin building tech for environments that are often unstable, fast moving, emotionally overwhelming?

[00:04:20] - [Speaker 0]
Tell me more about that.

[00:04:21] - [Speaker 1]
Well, I mean, any responder agency like the IRC is gonna use an ensemble of technology tools that they themselves didn't create, much just like any business. You know, we have we have our cloud environment, and we have our business systems that we run on our computers. And some forms of programming benefit from a digital component, and with the work that we do at Signpost, it was really born out of close observation of the communities that we aim to serve. It was the communities who taught us that we needed to use technology to help them better, essentially. Signpost itself as a project was born in 2015 in Greece.

[00:05:03] - [Speaker 1]
It was the height of the influx of asylum seekers from a number of different countries, but a lot of them coming from Syria. This was at the kind of peak of the Syrian civil war who didn't know how to exercise their human rights, what those human rights were, how to navigate these complex bureaucratic systems and survive along the way, and access the critical goods and services that they needed. And it turns out that really information was something that was previously being delivered to people in a very analog kind of way, but everyone was on their smartphones and everyone was on Facebook and WhatsApp and later Instagram and all these things. And so rather than setting up social work portals and help centers that were physical, we did those things too, but we also started reaching out to meet people digitally where they already were. It turns out that's a way more scalable approach.

[00:05:59] - [Speaker 1]
And we didn't just start engaging and chatting with people in sort of the the kind of like native operating environment of these applications, but rather we started pulling together systems where we could really maximize our impact and reach as many people as possible, Both through direct support, one on one engagement over these digital channels, but also through setting up self help portals that were web based, web apps that people could access and figure out how to solve really tricky problems. So for us, it was basically the aid sector like discovered cloud computing probably like ten to fifteen years after it was mainstream in our western digital society, it's not particularly tech savvy or tech forward sector, but when the clients that we were serving as a sector started outpacing the technological know how of the sector itself, they sort of drug us along and Signpost is really born from this dynamic where communities that we served were using tools, and we needed to meet them digitally where they already were, rather than inviting them to meet us where we were, which was somewhat in the past, to be honest.

[00:07:07] - [Speaker 0]
It's incredibly cool story. And for people hearing about Signpost for the first time, can you possibly maybe paint a picture of the kind of situations your users are are facing when they reach out for help, and and why access to trusted information can really become life changing in those moment?

[00:07:23] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. The the AIDS sector focuses largely on the delivery of of goods and services to help people. And information is often the glue that sort of holds together a response and that builds a trust layer between institutions, responder agencies, the communities that they endeavor to serve. Oftentimes the information component is a bit of an afterthought, or it's like a small budget line at the end of a different type of program. It's often not the priority, and it makes sense because there's a lot of different priorities that are competing response and that said, the absence of the right information at the right time can lead to really devastating consequences for communities.

[00:08:05] - [Speaker 1]
It could be the difference between fleeing armed conflict and going abroad to one country or a different one. It could mean falling into the hands of human traffickers. It could mean not accessing services that you need to support a family member who has a severe acute medical condition. It can mean everything, getting your children enrolled in school, getting a work permit. Information at the right moment is every bit as important as anything else in a response.

[00:08:36] - [Speaker 0]
I think people listening, a lot of people still associate customer experience technology with retail or enterprise support desk, and that's one of the reasons I was excited to talk with you today because you've used Zendesk to support millions of displaced people around the world. But was there a moment where you realized technology traditionally built for businesses could actually become humanitarian infrastructure? Feels like there must have been a big moment there.

[00:08:59] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. It's it's like, I have I always felt like when I came into this work that humanitarian organizations should be humanitarian organizations, organizations and technology companies should be technology companies. There's no way we're gonna build our own stuff that's gonna outpace the private sector, there's no way at all. On the contrary though, there's no way that the private sector is gonna build tools to work for humanitarian communities because by definition, those in need of humanitarian assistance are are the most impoverished and the most marginalized people in the world, there's no market there. So the best thing that we can do as a technology project is to bridge that gap, to take tools that were built, you know, purpose built for the private sector and figure out how to tweak them, make adjustments so that they can also work in in a humanitarian context.

[00:09:48] - [Speaker 1]
That was the story of how we started working with Zendesk back in in 2020. And it it was this really amazing moment where we went from a program that had a kind of fragmented technology stack. It was costly, expensive, not easy to scale. And we finally got a platform that was easy to roll out and we had an amazing team. They supported us also with some of their their implementation leads, really equipped us and empowered us to have a scalable blueprint.

[00:10:16] - [Speaker 1]
And once we had that in hand, it was this incredible thing where we could expand into new countries. We went from three countries to six countries to 10 to 20 to 30. And it was this really amazing moment where the tools that we had really had been built on, on top of we did, you know, do work ourselves, but we put it in the right place. Like, we we focused our effort on just tailoring it to these contexts that we worked in, rather than trying to build something ground up ourselves, which is pretty silly to try to do.

[00:10:46] - [Speaker 0]
And just to bring that scalable blueprint that you just mentioned there, but to bring that to life, you've now registered around 20,000,000 users and supported more than a half a million digital social work consultations. And behind those numbers, though, are real human beings navigating war, displacement, climate disaster, uncertainty. Are there any stories or moments that might have stayed with you personally? Because just to to bring to life the the human story behind this tech.

[00:11:15] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. Absolutely. We, in working in more and more countries around the world, you know, we register a huge number of users of our information products. It's sort of a staggering figure. Some people might just need help with the small thing, you know, trying to understand what what hours the clinic is open or what days a certain kind of service is offered, but other people really have come to us with really complex difficult problems.

[00:11:41] - [Speaker 1]
You know, a family fleeing The Sudan and trying to find refuge or survival in a place like Libya with a really sick family member, trying to both understand where they can find shelter, but also how to access the critical care that they need. A student who was in university who was displaced by armed conflict in their home country fleeing to a refugee camp abroad, having their dream of becoming a journalist shattered, and then finding access to a scholarship program and being successful and getting that scholarship and you know, who's now gone on to build a whole radio program that he runs for refugees like himself to other survivors of gender based violence who have needed to find refuge and different types of programming to support their recovery and transition towards a new life. The number of stories that we have are are just so many with the the breadth of the work that we've done over the years. Some of it has been transformational and really deep work, other it's helping people out in a hard time, but essentially the clients that we work with are often facing the most challenging moments in their of their lives, you know, the most difficult circumstances you could possibly imagine.

[00:13:00] - [Speaker 1]
And having the full breadth of options that you have to guide the very best decisions that you could make for yourself and your family is absolutely critical. Yeah. It's it's a a huge amount of anxiety that people experience when, you know, when situations are chaotic to the extent that, you know, you just don't know what to do and the cognitive burden and the cognitive load that's on people. It encourages people to make rash decisions, to not correctly assess their options, and having that knowledge in your back pocket is sort of key to reclaiming a sense of control over your life.

[00:13:41] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Such a powerful impact that you're having here, and one thing that also fascinates me is just how trust works in humanitarian context, because in many part of the world, misinformation can spread quickly during a crisis. So how do you at signpost ensure that information we see is verified, localized, and genuinely useful when the stakes are so high in situations like that?

[00:14:02] - [Speaker 1]
This is our whole service model is signpost. You know, we well, we started in in Europe. Most of the areas that we work in are are abroad, you know, in Africa, The Middle East, Asia, The Americas. What we do wherever we work is meet communities digitally on the platforms that they already use and rather than showing up with the right information that we think people need to have to navigate their journeys, we ask them what they need, and we listen really carefully, and the problems that people express, the challenges that they face, the kinds of scenarios that are difficult and multi layered and challenging that they face are often very different from the information that exists on say government websites or on responder agency websites. And so we work with communities to create the information that people need, that is always changing, crises are dynamic by nature, so that information has to constantly update and be accessible to them in languages that they understand, reflecting back their own needs as they themselves navigate this this crisis.

[00:15:13] - [Speaker 1]
Because they're the agents of change in their own life, we're just here to help out. And it's that reflecting back self expressed community need that is a first step towards building trust, meeting people in languages that they speak in the same kind of language and I I'm thinking like with legal stuff, it's often really complicated. You need to be a lawyer to understand what legally you're meant to do when you read certain websites, like you need a JD to understand what exactly the lawyer is saying that made the statement that was there. But we So we unpack all that stuff, we debureaucratize language, we we make it available even in dialects that people speak. And also we we, you know, we have to recognize the limits of our own knowledge.

[00:15:56] - [Speaker 1]
Sometimes people will present challenges and problems that we don't have answers to and so we'll research that content and we'll try to find answers to it, but we're also honest about our own limits and it's that sort of reflection process that meeting people where they are, the, you know, having a content model that is driven by self expressed user need, acknowledging the limits of our own knowledge and capabilities as well, that builds this kind of trust dynamic with with communities.

[00:16:25] - [Speaker 0]
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[00:16:45] - [Speaker 0]
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[00:17:23] - [Speaker 0]
So if you wanna see more about how it works, please head over to nordlayer.com/browser and check it out, and let me know your thoughts. And the humanitarian sector is also facing shrinking budgets at the exact same time the global need is increasing because of armed conflict, economic instability, and even climate related disasters. So has AI become a necessary for scaling support, or or rather than rather than just simply an innovation project? There's a real need there, isn't there?

[00:17:53] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. There certainly is. The situation today is is a real challenge, right? You said it very well yourself, people are trying to do, solve bigger problems with less resources than ever. AI is one of the biggest bets that the humanitarian sector has, really that any sector has for driving greater efficiencies in the work that people are doing and while in the private sector that mean that may mean like the bottom line they're gonna have more they're gonna have more profit or more net revenue or whatever.

[00:18:27] - [Speaker 1]
For us, the bottom line is the number of lives that we're able to touch and support. Driving greater efficiencies, creating programs that expand our reach and our impact, it is always an imperative on us as a sector. Technology is sort of a means of amplifying human intention, essentially. It doesn't save lives on its own, but it amplifies our intention and enables people to do more to help other people, And I feel like AI is one of the greatest amplifiers of human intention that we've ever encountered, and the sector has a duty to explore its use responsibly. Responsible AI is, you know, is is is hard to implement in practice and it takes real rigor and a lot of learning, but it's one of our bigger bets.

[00:19:17] - [Speaker 1]
The future is really unclear, and what we do know is that we need to rise to this moment. We need to put everything that we have towards making a greater impact with the limited funds and means that we have as agencies. So yeah, for us it's one of our big bets in a really challenging time. The IRC is an organization that is dedicated towards scaling programs that have the strongest evidence base for success. By doing this, we know that the work that we're doing is really the best bang for our buck in helping communities face some of the most challenging crises of their time.

[00:20:00] - [Speaker 1]
We have a sort of a framework where we're taking those best biggest bets and these involve things like malnutrition work, immunization, anticipatory response to climate disaster and we're really featuring this work. We're trying to take it to a bigger scale and we're trying to share it with the rest of the aid sector as well. So this is not just an IRC innovation innovation, but it's something that the entire sector can leverage to really get the best out of what we can do with the limited resources that we have. And right now, we're in this moment where, you know, the needs that people have as a result of armed conflict and climate disaster just by far outstrip the resources that are present. So it's really our duty, it's everyone's duty to focus on those activities that make the biggest difference that we know that we've proven make the biggest difference and really put everything we have in there to support those outcomes including AI, including technology, and that's a thing that we are doing right now at IRC and we're we're more structured and focused on this than ever before.

[00:21:06] - [Speaker 1]
So, yeah, hopefully, we'll have some some great news coming out of this work soon.

[00:21:09] - [Speaker 0]
I'd also imagine there's a certain amount of tension here because, yes, AI can increase access and scale, but humanitarian work, by its very nature, is deeply human and emotional. So how do you balance automation with empathy when people reaching out might be scared, isolated, or in a state of crisis?

[00:21:27] - [Speaker 1]
No. That's an excellent question. Essentially, we we wanna use AI to decrease the cognitive burden and, like, all the the busy, annoying, automatable kind of work. We wanna relieve our frontline responders and our, you know, and our back headquarters responders of some of the tedious things that detracts from their ability to fully express their humanity in doing this work. We are absolutely not looking to use AI to replace people, but rather to get the best out of the people that we already have.

[00:21:58] - [Speaker 1]
So, yeah, that's that's our approach there for sure.

[00:22:01] - [Speaker 0]
And you've built something that operates across languages, cultures, governments, legal systems, and very different social conditions. What have you learned about designing tech that that works globally while also feeling personal and relevant locally? Looking at

[00:22:15] - [Speaker 1]
it from the perspective that I've experienced as a director of Signpost, everything needs to be adaptable to a local context, but governable at a central level and as light away as humanly possible. So that balance of customization at an implementation level with a low burden governance model from a central level is really the key for us. There's often a push and pull with technologists of like wanting one system that's a sort of one size fits all and versus people who want their own things. Some of the things that they want at a money level are pretty arbitrary. So you have to thread that needle just right and, yeah.

[00:22:54] - [Speaker 1]
And it's particularly challenging when you're working with different needs and pressures from different contexts and different language groups in different countries, but there's always a way to to to kinda thread the needle just Yeah.

[00:23:06] - [Speaker 0]
And I think there'll be a lot of enterprise leaders listening to this podcast. They're currently trying to figure out how to deploy AI responsibly inside their organization, but you've got quite a unique vantage point here. So what lessons from high stakes humanitarian environments do you think the the corporate world still hasn't fully understood yet? Because you're coming at this from such a unique angle, might see a lot of things that others don't in in big business.

[00:23:30] - [Speaker 1]
I'm not sure about that. What what I What we have seen is a number of really promising pilots emerge. We have been testing broad range of use cases and trying to ensure, you know, of course, the highest standards of safety and do no harm. But what we're finding is that some of these edge cases work well, other ones don't, and we're starting to align on a series of use cases that have a scalable blueprint that we know will be fit for purpose at scale. So it's been iteration.

[00:24:03] - [Speaker 1]
It's been testing a lot of pilots, and I feel like today and this is with, like, agent based work. That's nice. So we did all that stuff. Now we have a few blueprints that we're we need to scale, you know. There there's a time when all of the experimentation needs to get reined in and you need to focus on the things that have a really strong business model.

[00:24:22] - [Speaker 1]
But you have to do that experimentation to understand where your best bets are sometimes. That's on one level. On another level, it's also just application of AI at enterprise level for the everyday efficiency tools that people need to do their jobs better. And that side of scaling is, it really wasn't ready a year and a half ago and and the way that it is today. That all all the agent work and the piloting and the innovation and all the stuff, that's really nice.

[00:24:49] - [Speaker 1]
It's great. It's making a big difference, but driving greater efficiencies, having better insights on your data in the everyday work. That's gonna make, that's gonna be an even bigger game changer and that's something that's now becoming very possible by the tools that are out there on the market. In order to do that, you have to do enablement, you have to do education and training and teaching and all these things. You have to have policies in place, you have to do all the boring, you know, kinda nuts and bolts of what it means to run a business, but it's critical.

[00:25:19] - [Speaker 1]
It's important. So we've been doing the ensemble of these things at IRC, and, you know, we're doing enablement, we're doing the training, we're doing the enterprise tool rollouts, we've also been doing the experimenting and now we're honing down on certain use cases that work, but it's a real 360 degrees process involving everything from from from an empowering personnel to data transformation projects, all of the stuff that that companies are saying, but, I think now we're really in a spot where we need to focus on scale. We, you know, it's not pilots anymore now, so it's about scale, it's about real impact now.

[00:25:53] - [Speaker 0]
And finally, when you step back and look at the bigger picture here, do you think the tech and AI are changing the very nature of humanitarian aid itself? And and what gives you hope when you look at where this could go over the next few years?

[00:26:05] - [Speaker 1]
I don't think that technology is changing the nature of humanitarian work itself. Absolutely not. It's just helping some people do a little bit better with reach reach more people. There's also dangers that go along with technology and humanitarian work. It requires our humanity and our engagement and it can't all be automated.

[00:26:24] - [Speaker 1]
It shouldn't, you know, go to a sort of technocratic kind of exercise where people make huge decisions without any real people being involved along the way. So, no, I I think at best it will help us do a better job, but we really also need to keep those communities in mind along the way, and the more that we're able to follow what our local responders and local communities need, the better we're gonna get this in the future. But, yeah, it's very promising, it'll change a lot of things, but it's it's, you know, it's still people that get it done at the end of the day.

[00:26:58] - [Speaker 0]
I think that's a powerful moment to end on, but for everyone listening, if they wanna find out more information about IRC, signpost, anything we talked about, where would you like me to point, everyone listening?

[00:27:08] - [Speaker 1]
Rescue.org is our website. It's our global website. That's the portal that people should look at.

[00:27:13] - [Speaker 0]
Awesome. I'll have links there, so anyone listening can go straight there and find that, and support, learn, and find out more information. But just thank you for sharing your story today. Thank you. What I loved about this conversation today was this reminder that technology at its best is not really about platforms, AI models, or automation at all.

[00:27:33] - [Speaker 0]
This was a story about helping people regain sense of control during moments of chaos. And listening to those stories that my guest shared of refugees navigating conflict, families searching for medical support, students rebuilding futures after displacement, and vulnerable communities trying to make life changing decisions with limited information and overwhelming uncertainty in front of them. And it's these very human stories, these moments of providing access to trusted, localized, understandable information can be really did show how they can become every bit as important as food, shelter, or medical care. I love the way Signpost approached AI here. There was no blind optimism, no suggestion that tech will replace humanity.

[00:28:22] - [Speaker 0]
Instead, the focus is reducing cognitive burden, scaling support responsibly and freeing frontline workers to spend more time doing deeply human work, work that cannot and should never be automated. And at a time where so many AI conversations focus on efficiency and commercial outcomes, For me, this episode recorded at Zendesk Relate offered a powerful reminder that technology can also be used to restore dignity, agency, and most importantly of all, hope. And I think we all could use that right now. So if you'd like to learn more about the incredible work being done by the International Rescue Committee and signpost, simply head over to rescue.org. And as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[00:29:09] - [Speaker 0]
Where do you think AI and technology can make the biggest positive human impact over the next few years? And how do we ensure that we don't lose empathy along the way? As always, techtalksnetwork.com. That's where you can find me and I'll return again tomorrow with another episode. Thanks for listening as always.

[00:29:38] - [Speaker 0]
Bye for now.