Needslist, a humanitarian tech startup, is immediately creating an online platform to assist local organisations quickly receive large-scale donations of warm clothing, generators, food, and other essential things as the situation in Ukraine intensifies.

According to the UN, 17.7 million people in Ukraine are in urgent need, and the humanitarian catastrophe is being exacerbated by severe power outages and freezing temperatures. Through an online marketplace, the platform enables companies, significant international NGOs, and other vendors to connect with tiny grassroots organisations.

With a $1 million funding and a team of 7 Google Fellows engineers who worked full-time for 6 months to improve security features and translate the platform into 5 languages, Google.org backed NeedsList.

Since the launch of NeedsList, the RespondLocal platform has distributed more than $19 million in aid to more than 500,000 recipients in 25 countries. This assistance has supported the resettlement of Afghan, Ukrainian, and Venezuelan refugees in the United States as well as the provision of locally made COVID PPE to refugee health workers in Bangladesh, Iraq, Uganda, and Kenya.

Source: Prnewswire