A group of six Syrian refugees in Berlin has built a mobile and web application called Bureaucrazy to help refugees get over the significant hurdle of paperwork. They realised that many refugees had problems accessing and filling out forms, since only a few were in Arabic or English.
Through translating, simplifying and mapping various bureaucratic procedures, the app aims to reduce waiting time by informing refugees what paperwork they need, where to get the correct forms, what documentation they need to bring, and how long it might take to be processed. The app is proving to be valuable not just to refugees but to other newcomers and natives alike, due to the complexity of the German bureaucratic system.
The app’s developers were mentored at the non-profit ReDi School For Digital Integration in Germany and the app’s prototype was a winner at a hackathon co-organised by the school, Startup Summit Europe and Facebook. Currently, they are crowdfunding the app’s development, aiming to launch it in early January, 2017.
