Southeast Christian Church works with numerous disadvantaged communities in and around Louisville, including refugees trying to acclimate to the area. A significant challenge is the language barrier, as English-speaking volunteers must communicate with non-English-speaking immigrants and refugees. Southeast came to Slingshot to leverage technology, particularly AI-powered language translation, to break down barriers and scale their ability to help. They envisioned expanding their reach beyond 1:1, face-to-face interactions by moving support into the digital space.
Southeast Christian
Helping refugees and immigrants acclimate to new cities with live native language translation and community guide chats.
The Story
Technology: Azure AI, Azure Cloud, MAUI, React, .NET, Docker
The Challenges |
The Solutions |
| Language barriers between volunteers and refugees/immigrants, especially for less common languages | Leveraged Azure AI to enable real-time language translation between users’ native languages and English |
| Difficulty connecting immigrants with local experts and resources | Incorporated features for volunteers to build profiles highlighting their areas of expertise |
| Lack of centralized resources for common issues faced | Created auto-translated resources for daily issues like schools, healthcare, and more |
| Concerns with relationship building without in-person communication | Added onboarding videos with local immigrants speaking in their native language |
| Limitations in the church’s ability to expand the program beyond Louisville | Designed the app for multi-tenancy to allow easy expansion to other communities |
The Challenges |
The Solutions |
| Language barriers between volunteers and refugees/immigrants, especially for less common languages | Leveraged Azure AI to enable real-time language translation between users’ native languages and English |
| Difficulty connecting immigrants with local experts and resources | Incorporated features for volunteers to build profiles highlighting their areas of expertise |
| Lack of centralized resources for common issues faced | Created auto-translated resources for daily issues like schools, healthcare, and more |
| Concerns with relationship building without in-person communication | Added onboarding videos with local immigrants speaking in their native language |
| Limitations in the church’s ability to expand the program beyond Louisville | Designed the app for multi-tenancy to allow easy expansion to other communities |
Hitting The Target
The Hello City app is live and helping refugees settle in, regardless of language barrier. Users can sign up as either a local guide or a refugee seeking support, and be seamlessly matched through the app’s translation-enabled chat functionality. This will allow the church to connect new arrivals with the resources and community connections they need to successfully acclimate to the Louisville area, with the potential to scale the program to other cities in the future.
Hitting The Target
The Hello City app is live and helping refugees settle in, regardless of language barrier. Users can sign up as either a local guide or a refugee seeking support, and be seamlessly matched through the app’s translation-enabled chat functionality. This will allow the church to connect new arrivals with the resources and community connections they need to successfully acclimate to the Louisville area, with the potential to scale the program to other cities in the future.
