The plight of refugees is never far away but seemingly under the radar in the media - unless some sort of tragedy comes to light like a ship drowning with refugees. It follows with so many people on the march somewhere around the world that families are often lost to one another. Add to the mix of refugees those who simply flee terror a la as in Darfur or famine and natural disasters.
Now, an attempt is being made to locate and re-unite refugees - using the "power" of the internet.
As Spiegel International writes:
"Facebook is great if you want to find long-lost classmates. But what if you're a refugee looking for family members? A new Web site seeks to provide those displaced by war or disaster with a platform to search themselves -- provided they have Internet access."
So:
"More to the point, though, you also have a decent chance of finding that cute girl who sat next to you in the fifth grade -- the one you haven't seen in 15 years. That, at least, was the function that caught the imaginations of Danish brothers Christopher and David Mikkelsen. Years ago, the two realized that a social networking platform might be a great tool refugees could use to help them find their families. Now, just a few months after the launch of www.refunite.org, the site has made great strides toward becoming the go-to search engine for displaced people around the world.
The idea is actually a very simple one. Each year, millions of people are uprooted by war, famine or natural disaster. Escaping catastrophe, though, is not always an orderly process. Families can easily get separated and, once the displaced cross borders, often get sent to widely dispersed destinations. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are over 1.5 million minors who have lost contact with their parents."
Read the complete piece here.
Now, an attempt is being made to locate and re-unite refugees - using the "power" of the internet.
As Spiegel International writes:
"Facebook is great if you want to find long-lost classmates. But what if you're a refugee looking for family members? A new Web site seeks to provide those displaced by war or disaster with a platform to search themselves -- provided they have Internet access."
So:
"More to the point, though, you also have a decent chance of finding that cute girl who sat next to you in the fifth grade -- the one you haven't seen in 15 years. That, at least, was the function that caught the imaginations of Danish brothers Christopher and David Mikkelsen. Years ago, the two realized that a social networking platform might be a great tool refugees could use to help them find their families. Now, just a few months after the launch of www.refunite.org, the site has made great strides toward becoming the go-to search engine for displaced people around the world.
The idea is actually a very simple one. Each year, millions of people are uprooted by war, famine or natural disaster. Escaping catastrophe, though, is not always an orderly process. Families can easily get separated and, once the displaced cross borders, often get sent to widely dispersed destinations. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are over 1.5 million minors who have lost contact with their parents."
Read the complete piece here.
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