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In Maré Complex, Brazil, residents needed help dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. To help the residents, a group of researchers and NGOs created the project Conexáo Saúde (Health Connection). This project allowed residents to learn about COVID, get help testing for COVID, and get help isolating if they had COVID-19.

Guia Rocinha Histórica is an online guided tour of the Rocinha favela built on the StoryMaps platform. In the project, Rocinha’s own residents narrate stories about the community’s history and local culture, making the forgotten community visible to the public and alleviating the negative impact of COVID-19 through tourism.

COVID-19 cases during the pandemic in Rio de Janeiro were not accurately captured due to a lack of testing. Most residents do not have official addresses, making them unable to get the COVID-19 tests. So volunteers went door to door to get accurate information about the COVID-19 cases.

Description Australia in 2013 made radical immigration policy changes. They struck a deal with its former colony, Papua New Guinea, called the “Papua New Guinea-Australia Migration Agreement.” With this, the forced migrants seeking asylum in Australia were relocated to the Manus Regional Processing Centre. This is an offshore detention center in New Guinea that they

Za’atari refugee camp, the world’s largest, forces residents to navigate unpaved, inaccessible terrain. Safwan Harb, disabled by polio, engineered a wheelchair-bike from scavenged parts, deliberately using discarded materials so that other disabled people could replicate his design. His invention transforms immobility into agency within a system that abandoned accessibility entirely.

In 1999, NATO bombed the Balkan Route, a path migrants commonly walked on. With thousands of unmapped landmines remaining, it became increasingly dangerous to travel through the area. The Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Suspected Area Map was created. This app allows users to report, locate, and avoid suspected mine-contaminated areas.

FIOTIM is a mobile museum in a trailer that brings art to underserved Brazilian communities, democratizing cultural access. FIOTIM has inspired artists to create similar projects like the Museu da Imagem Itinerante de Maré, a portable museum of photographs that reclaim the favelas’ story through the eyes of their residents.

Due to a migration crisis in Greece, thousands of life jackets were discarded. So some migrants and volunteers upcycled them into different products, such as bags. The funds generated went directly towards essential community needs. It also inspired people to create other items out of the life jackets, like mattresses.

After Cyclone Komen struck Myanmar, it caused flooding and landslides in the west, making many regions inaccessible by road. So the World Health Organization and local community volunteers converted boats into mobile clinics. With locals’ navigation knowledge, they floated through to deliver essential medical care to remote communities.

In 2015, Hungary abruptly closed its border with Croatia, causing thousands of migrants to become stranded in temporary encampments. The internet in these camps became overwhelmed, unstable, and unusable. Volunteers put donated technology into bags and gave the bags to volunteers to walk around with, creating mobile Wi-Fi hotspots.