This humanitarian crisis solution product has been created in the midst of the refugee crisis.
From the initiative launched by a few volunteers at the height of the refugee crisis in Croatia to a startup that could turn upside-down the concept of solving communication problems during humanitarian crises in situations when communication is absolutely essential and it is important to provide fast and reliable access to the Internet. This would be a brief description of the MeshPoint’s development path, reports netokracija.com on June 14, 2016.
The project has entered the finals of The Europas, the so-called “Oscar for Startups” that has been established by Mike Butcher from TechCrunch. Through their work with humanitarian organisations, MeshPoint team says they realized that the equipment they use was not adapted to the conditions on the ground. For people who are computer network experts, the installation and maintenance of the equipment is simple, but not for volunteers, especially if the equipment needs to be moved. Therefore, they decided to put all the equipment in one case to simplify the set up procedure for the volunteers.
A diverse team, including Valent Turković, Srđan Kovačević, Ivan Jelušić, Vlatko Matijević, Milica Radišić Milosavljević and Vjekoslav Radišić, designed a case that can be 3D-printed, and which consists of routers, batteries and other equipment. Everything will be open-source, so it can be printed out and put together by anyone who needs such a case. The user can even work to improve the design and its components. One of the goals is to sell the finished product to charitable organizations. Although this project is about social entrepreneurship and humanitarian purposes, its further development and production requires funding.
It will be really interesting to see the further path of this praiseworthy device that could bring significant changes in those moments when unrestricted access to Internet and any information it can transmit or receive is extremely important. The whole story gets even more interesting when we add the fact that all this came from a group of volunteers who did not mind packing equipment in their backpack and going to visit refugees, staying with them for days and weeks to see what were the needs and challenges in the field and how to figure out an adequate solution.
Today, we will know whether they will end up holding the award for the best humanitarian technological product. Even more important is to make sure that people from humanitarian organisations recognize the potential of their technology solution.
