Google Gives $11 Million To Help Refugees

According to a recent announcement, Google gives $11 million to help refugees in Europe, but it is still debatable whether the philanthropic deeds are really philanthropic. The money have been used to create the platform Crisis Info Hub, a website that refugees can access to get information on the countries they are traveling to.

In response to Europe’s refugee crisis, Google declared on September 15ththat they will be raising funds to contribute to the cause. Their initiative immediately gathered $5.5 million from individual donations and the sum was almost doubled by the end of the period with a whopping $11 million donations.

Now that the money has been raised, it was time for Google to explain where the funds have been invested. The tech giant recently declared that the money have been invested in the development of the Crisis Info Hub, the website where migrants, in general and refugees, in particular can get information on the countries they are visiting.

The website contains data on public transportation, shelter and other similar services that refugees may benefit of during their stay. The initiative has been carried out with the collaboration of International Rescue Committee and Mercy Corps, as the company has recently stated. For the moment, the online platform has only been updated with information on Lesbos, Greece, whereas other regions will be added in the following period.

Before you rush into being judgmental and say that Google used the recent philanthropic as a means of strengthening its online presence, as well, there are still things you need to know. The search giant has foreseen refugees’ need to freely access the Internet in order to enter the Crisis Info Hub; therefore, Google has partnered with NetHope to offer free Internet to refugees in European countries.

The new hub has been purposefully designed to let viewers quickly access all the data they need. The platform’s layout takes very few time to load on the smartphone and it does not consume the battery life of the smartphone, either, Google has informed.

The remaining money has been transferred to people in Lebanon and Jordan. This task has been carried out with the help of the UN refugee Agency because it was impossible to directly give refugees the money they needed. Jacquelline Fuller, director of Google.org., has explained that such philanthropic acts are incredibly rare, the most common form of donation being the cash transfer.

At the beginning of October, Google introduced another feature that is expected to help refugees. The search giant added Arabic to its visual translation tool because they assumed non-English speaking refugees would require a special tool to get along with residents in the regions that are crossing.