Washington, D.C. – Today, IBM announced its participation as a founding partner in the White House call-to-action for private sector engagement on the global refugee crisis. There are more than 65 million displaced people in the world today, the highest number on record since the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) began collecting statistics.

More than 21 million of these people have crossed international borders in search of safety and are registered as refugees.  The despair that drives these people to flee their homes is heartbreaking, but their resilience is awe inspiring.  Refugees are a valuable untapped resource and, if given the opportunity, can thrive and contribute wherever they reside.

A crisis of this scale, however, requires more than government action. For this reason, IBM is proud to join with President Obama in challenging the U.S. private sector to draw on its unique expertise, resources and entrepreneurial spirit to help refugees regain control over their lives and integrate into their new communities.

To date, IBM has taken the following action to assist the global refugee crisis:

IBM has been actively partnering with regional and international NGOs and launching IBM volunteer initiatives, in an integrated fashion, to provide a substantive and effective response to the critical and long-term needs of refugees and migrants arriving in Europe.

• IBM Impact Grants of mobile and cloud capabilities are supporting European NGOs as they collect medical data, track refugee health, and analyze data for trends and insights. Mobile apps designed for Italian NGOs INTERSOS and Médecins Sans Frontières are enabling better health interventions based on data and analytics. In Turkey, IBM is helping two NGOs which are UNHCR implementing partners and which provide services to more than 60,000 refugees monthly. IBM provided consulting on data strategy to improve services, and design and implementation of a web-based custom data management solution.
• To Singa France, an NGO that supports cohesion between refugees and local communities, IBM delivered data management consulting and support toward a solution to match refugees with local hosts, accelerating access to accommodation, cultural and economic opportunities and wider social integration.
• For the Deutsche Rote Kreuz (German Red Cross), IBM developed a solution, based on Sahana and hosted in IBM Softlayer, to help them manage and improve numerous sources of conflicting refugee information at the reception centre in Mannheim, which has a capacity of 6,000 refugees and migrants.
• Leveraging IBM’s capabilities in security, IBM granted to UK NGO Stop The Traffik five licenses of i2 analyst software and training, as well as Softlayer hosting for analysis of trafficking data. Refugees and migrants are uniquely susceptible to exploitation. Using the software, staff will be able to analyse data submitted by citizens around the world who suspect that human trafficking is taking place in their area.

IBMers also engage in skills-based volunteerism and mentoring programs for refugees, leading to better employability and social integration.

• In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden, mentoring and skills training initiatives are supporting children with language and cultural learning, and helping to bring skilled refugees into the job market. In Belgium, more than twenty workshops in various topics are delivered per year. Volunteers in Sweden worked for three months with the Red Cross at the Swedish border in the height of winter, supporting refugees in various ways.
• Volunteers are innovating – in Denmark, by developing an app to match mentors with mentees; and in Austria, by joining a Social Hackathon on Migration organized for late June to work on apps and games related to education and refugees, using IBM Bluemix as the cloud development platform.

Finally, IBM has launched internship opportunities for skilled refugees in Finland, Germany, and Sweden – with some interns already having completed the program. IBM Sweden is a founding partner of an AmCham Sweden collaboration to integrate immigrant-owned enterprises into procurement processes of larger Swedish companies.

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Media Contact:
Adam Pratt
Ph: (202) 551-9625
arpratt@us.ibm.com