The International Rescue Committee puts Afghan refugees on the path to safety

A little over a year ago, the United States evacuated the last of its troops from Afghanistan—leaving behind millions of displaced Afghan people, including allies who served alongside the U.S. government, NGOs, and media organizations, in roles ranging from professionals and journalists to translators and security personnel. And while the U.S. has put programs in place to help Afghan refugees begin the journey to resettlement and permanent residence, the programs rely on an application and verification process, which require more than spreadsheet oversight to manage.

Zendesk supports the verification process

Given a partnership that dates back to 2019, it made sense for the IRC to turn to Zendesk. The Zendesk Tech for Good program first partnered with the IRC in its efforts to provide a safety net for asylum-seekers at a Welcome Center in Phoenix, AZ. Now, the IRC and Zendesk have collaborated on five other global projects through the Tech for Good program. Considering its in-depth experience with Zendesk solutions, the IRC quickly moved to integrate Zendesk Sell into its Afghan refugee casework and verification pipeline.

The organization used Zendesk Sell to create an inbox to receive verification requests where caseworkers could respond. Then, the Signpost project collaborated with Zendesk to build upon the Sell platform to automate and track thousands of records stored in the inbox in a secure and orderly manner.

To date, the IRC has submitted over 2,000 referrals and requests for visas, processed through Sell.

Caseworkers received and stored documents and also created automations that generated the forms and letters needed to present to the U.S. government. Prior to using Sell, caseworkers wrote out documents and letters by hand and automated tedious tasks to aid with the documentation process.

“There were points in that project where if we were to have continued at the same rate of writing documents by hand, it would’ve taken years,” says Liam Nicoll, Product Manager, Signpost.

Beyond efficiency, Sell also offered increased transparency into key analytics. A caseworker explains, “Before Zendesk Sell, it was challenging to know if applicants viewed our messages or to track the time passed since receiving communications. Then Zendesk did everything—with a complete system to process everything! The best part was that I could completely trust the system to support communication with Afghan applicants in a consistent and professional manner and find what we’re looking for throughout and even after concluding a case.”

To date, the IRC has submitted over 2,000 referrals and requests for visas, processed through Sell.

The IRC has helped numerous Afghans take steps toward safety through resettlement and is already replicating this process with Sell in other projects—such as navigating newly relocated refugees to available services and informing those with humanitarian parole status to collect their government cash assistance.

The IRC plans to continue partnering with Zendesk to build and simplify global projects to help those impacted by crisis.