A week or so ago, we were contacted regarding the urgent need to deliver a technical solution to help the Norwegian Refugee Council to be able to best direct aid to Ukrainian refugees in the form of vital supplies, money, or housing. 

Working alongside Cloud-first organisation Zing, industry-leading Twilio software was used to create WhatsApp workflows to provide a communication platform for these refugees fleeing their homes in Ukraine. And then visualisations were constructed to enable the huge data flows to be best represented to those in NRC 

We spoke with Victoria Hadlow, the lead Microsoft Power BI developer on this project, to find out more about it and why it was so important to her:

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me — how did you become involved in this project?

After joining the in-house Microsoft Power BI team, I’ve had the chance to work with a wide range of clients. Supporting NRC in this venture in Ukraine was something very close to my heart, so I volunteered myself for the project, as soon as I heard what it was trying to achieve. 

What was the process?

Our partners, Zing, were constructing the underlying communication platform that allowed refugees to engage with responsive AI chatbots to help collect relevant information regarding their whereabouts, home, destination, health and much more.

My role was to create a series of Power BI dashboards, which allowed staff at the NRC to get a centralised view of all the data collected, and represent it in ways that will allow actionable insights across the entire organisation and at all levels

Why was this work so important to you?

I’m Ukrainian. My mother still works in Pavlusenko Hospital in Zhytomyr, Ukraine. As you know, now is a very difficult  period for Ukraine and its citizens. Russian bombs hit the hospital, and it needs to be completely reconstructed. There are few windows or doors remaining, and almost all medical equipment is now out of order— the city is currently without its main medical help, at a time when it most needs it.

Working on this project and helping my own people in such a vital way has been the proudest moment of my career to-date. I hope my contribution helps the country in some small way,

When contacted directly by an Exec at Twilio regarding this much needed and urgent piece of work, we were more than delighted to be able to volunteer our specialist, technical Microsoft resource to help. Then, to have a Ukrainian member of our Power BI team deliver the project made it even more personal and special.

–Andrew Richardson, CEO at Influential Software

Thanks for everything you are doing for us, we are truly appreciative of your work

– Christopher Hoffman, Global Project Manager at NRC

We are at The Hague at the moment and have just seen your PowerBI Reporting – super impressed. Thank you so much for the work

– Julian Hucker, CEO at Zing

What can you do to help? 

The current crisis in Ukraine is unprecedented and quickly evolving; we’ll be continuing to look for more projects that allow us to support the country. But if you’d also like to help make a meaningful difference, we have several donation links Victoria would like us to share:

• NRC
• The Ukrainian Red Cross
• The international Medical Corps
• UNICEF

We hope you consider making a donation. In the mean time, we’ll be continuing to work with NRC to maintain their new Power BI dashboard as well as looking for more projects that allow us to give back.