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  • Workshop with Karuna and Ubilabs: Babette Brühl, graphic designer & Jörg Richert, CEO of Karuna (Photo: Ubilabs)
  • Mogli is an integral part of the Karuna team and the name-giver for the project (Photo: Ubilabs)
  • Lively discussions among the teams of Karuna and Ubilabs (Photo: Ubilabs)

Insights

Mokli: an Interactive Guide for Young People in Need

Karuna is a Berlin-based aid organization that supports children and young people who live on the street and/or who are suffering from or at risk of addiction by providing them with a broad spectrum of advice. In addition to providing individual support for the young people affected, the organization also tries to arrange for them assistance, therapies and places to sleep. To help the young people help themselves better, the charity has now set itself the goal of developing an interactive map in collaboration with Ubilabs which will show them where to find all the important places they need to go.

Quickly find the nearest place to sleep

The new mobile website (with the working title "Mokli") will seek to provide street kids and unaccompanied refugee children with some orientation in what is becoming a more and more complicated aid system. Because of the circumstances in which they find themselves, young people separated from their families are often not in a position to find the most appropriate places to go to and receive advice. 

The interactive map on the mobile website will make it really easy to find the nearest emergency sleeping shelter, food distribution center or day-care facility. Filters will make the search easier ­– for example, sleeping shelters for women only. The young people affected will be involved in developing the app. An important point to consider is that the website should load quickly, should use only a small amount of data, and be intuitive to use. One way of achieving this is to use self-explanatory icons rather than long passages of text. The mobile website will also be available in several languages. 

Funded by Google – implemented by Ubilabs 

The project will be funded by prize money from the Google Impact Challenge, which supports 
digital projects run by NGOs. Ubilabs is responsible for the design and implementation of the mobile website based on Google Maps. This includes developing an editorial system (CMS) which will allow Karuna itself to produce and manage information, to design the look of the website and the interactive map, and ultimately also to undertake the programming.