In 2023, the acceleration program of the Act to Support contest, implemented by East Europe Foundation as part of the Phoenix project with the support of the European Union, continued.

For several months of the acceleration program, teams of 20 civil society organizations worked with mentors and industry experts, listened to lectures, analyzed the market, studied successful solutions, finalized their concepts, and prepared for presentations of their projects. The mentors and partners of the acceleration program were the Center42 innovation agency.[1] 

During the demo day and project pitching, the jury selected 10 winning organizations.  Each received funding of up to €20,000 to implement each civic tech tool. They finalized projects for chatbots, websites, and platforms that will help communities, IDPs, and other people affected by the war.

So, now we are going to share 10 developed/refined solutions from our winners.

CO “CF Balbek Bureau” with the online constructor RE:Ukraine Villages

As part of the project, the team added two new regions to the RE:Ukraine Villages online constructor: Dnipro and Odesa. RE:Ukraine Villages is an online constructor that facilitates the rebuilding of rural homes in a way that respects the local context. The addition of two new regions allows for the preservation of cultural heritage and the organic image of Ukrainian villages and prevents it from being erased by typical development in the future reconstruction. Now, the online constructor, which uses data from an ethnological study of the regions to generate architectural designs for rebuilding private homes while preserving cultural identity, can be applied to rebuild a house rebuilding project in Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa regions as well. The potential target audience of the constructor in these two regions includes 144 thousand Ukrainians.

The online constructor is available at https://villages.reukraine.org/

CO “CF Ukrainian IT Hub” has developed a website “Chatovi online”

As part of the project, the team, in partnership with the Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine, developed the website “Chatovi online”, which is a tool for gaining up-to-date knowledge on cyber and media literacy and interacting with a database of socially unacceptable resources to block them by filing mass complaints to cleanse the Ukrainian segment of social networks from Russian influence. Prior to the start of the project, the team, together with volunteers, managed to block 24,425 propaganda resources with a total audience of more than 23.2 million people.

To join the fight against Russian propaganda and learn more about cyber hygiene, please visit https://chatovi.online/

CSO “Autistic People Friendly” and a mobile application for children with ASD

The team of the CSO has developed a simple and intuitive mobile application for Android and IOS, which helps to remove barriers to communication between children with ASD and the world around them. The application with PECS cards is designed to help children with ASD solve basic everyday tasks and improve their communication skills. An important feature of the application is the ability to customize cards to the needs of users. Currently, more than 2,000 people use the application, and the target audience of the application in Ukraine comprises more than 75,000 children.

Application is available for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apf.app&hl=uk and IOS: https://apps.apple.com/ua/app/apf-aac/id6503189799

CSO “All-Ukrainian Association of Donors of Ukraine” and the DonorUA for Teams tool

The team’s goal was to attract new people to voluntary, free, and regular blood donation using a game tool for creating and developing blood donor communities – DonorUA for Teams. To do this, the team improved the existing platform by adding a rating system and Impact Score of registered teams, visualization of team goals, and a wide variety of subscription options. A special feature of the project is the creation of a chatbot based on ChatGPT, which provides information on where to donate blood in a particular settlement and how to prepare for it. As a result of the project, 49 teams joined the platform and made 1,553 donations.

To join the corporate blood donation tool, please, visit https://app.donor.ua/dashboard  

CSO “Generation of Mothers Lada” with a chatbot about emotions for mothers

The team of the CSO has expanded and improved its chatbot, which helps mothers gain knowledge about the nature and specifics of their own and their children’s difficult emotions, learn about tools that help them understand what is happening to them and how to cope with their own or their children’s difficult emotions and return to a resourceful state by learning to live these emotions in an environmentally friendly way. The updated chatbot now offers 16 more emotions for mothers and 9 more emotions for children, as well as video explanations on how to work with these emotions. In addition, the chatbot offers to use the “Daily exercise guide” to work through difficult emotions or the all-Ukrainian database of contacts of psychological projects, centers, and services that provide psychological support and assistance. More than 3,000 mothers with young children have already used the chatbot to understand emotions.

You can use the chatbot at https://t.me/lada_maternity_emotions_bot

CSO “Country of Digital Initiatives” with digital evacuation plans

The aim of the project was to develop and implement an MVP service for digitalizing evacuation plans for settlements and effectively educating the population on how to act in the event of an emergency. Ostroh Urban Territorial Community became a pilot community within the project. The team has developed an ecosystem of CityGuard products, including the Authority App: a tool for the Urban Territorial Community administration, the Citizen App: a tool for community residents, and a chatbot for use by community residents during evacuation. Ostroh Urban Territorial Community also conducted training on how to use the system for the administration and how to use the system during evacuation.

To learn more about the project for community residents, please visit https://vartovy.com/

CSO “Conscious Bucha Community” and the medical application Sympto.me

The main goal of the project was to improve the accessibility and quality of medical and psychological care for residents of the Bucha community. For this reason, the Sympto.me application was developed to facilitate the work of medical professionals by allowing them to quickly and conveniently collect information about patients’ health status. The application uses a virtual avatar of a physician who asks questions about a patient’s health and provides recommendations. The real physician receives the collected information before the patient’s visit, which greatly facilitates the diagnosis process.

Currently, the application has a pediatrics section, while a version for adult patients will be available later. The program also provides mental health prevention. For users to use the application, a community healthcare facility needs to be connected to it.

As part of the project, the team developed and coded algorithms (scenarios) for interacting with users of the application in the area of physical health (interviewing patients to collect anamnesis) with a total of more than 300 options. The team also recorded 8.5 hours of audio content (voiceover of video content with an avatar in Ukrainian). The total number of users of the application by the end of the project reached 3,726 people.

To learn more about the application’s capabilities for patients and healthcare administrators, please, visit https://sympto.me/

CSO “Foundation.101” and the IDP housing search service “Prykhystok”

“Prykhystok” is a service for finding free housing for IDPs. As part of the project, the team modernized the website by improving the way people search for housing; creating user and administrator accounts; introducing a “subscription” service for new apartments; creating an internal chat on the website to improve security level; and adding an accessibility menu to make the website more inclusive. Since the beginning of the year, more than 120,000 people have visited the site, and the project’s information campaign has reached almost 300,000 people seeking or willing to offer refuge.

To use the service to find accommodation or to offer accommodation for IDPs, please visit https://prykhystok.gov.ua/

CSO “Fiscal Policy Research Center” and the tool on the expenditure for Ukraine’s restoration

The project team has developed a system for displaying information on expenditures aimed at restoring Ukraine, including funds from international partners. To do this, the team analyzed[2]  and created three databases: on the Government’s decision on restoration expenditures for the period 2022-2023; on procurement from the state budget for restoration for the period 2022-2023; on restoration expenditures for the period 2022-2023.

The service can already be used to find out what UAH 12.9 billion from the state budget was spent on in 2022-2023.

To learn more about the recovery costs, please, visit https://fiscalcenter.org/liquidationfund

CSO “Legal Headquarters of Ukraine” and free legal advice service

As part of the project, the team worked to enhance existing technical solutions, such as chatbots on Telegram (https://t.me/ua_law_help_bot) and Viber (https://cutt.ly/d9W0CQ1), with a web version for users and lawyers to provide free legal aid to Ukrainians through an integrated ecosystem of socially useful technical solutions. As part of the project, the team provided 1,437 free legal consultations.

Now you can also get free legal aid at https://yurshtab.com/