San Juan, Puerto Rico - With the objective of continuing to close the gap between social needs and available community resources, the platform opens a call for bona fide community organizations dedicated to all types of social assistance to join the efforts to expedite with precision helps those in need.
ReférAyuda.com, a digital platform generated by Sociants, facilitates coordination between all constituents to assist a person, family or community. Through the platform it is certified that the help was provided, giving all those concerned visibility, transparency and credibility to the process. In addition, real-time information helps achieve sustainability of available resources to meet the needs of people affected by their social circumstances.
“Since September 2017 we have developed a directory of community providers, non-profit organizations and social assistance programs. The main function is to match the needs of individuals with social initiative organizations and assistance agencies, which have the experience, credentials and resources to provide help quickly and documenting each assistance provided to the individual.” expressed Diego Loinaz, creator of Sociants.
The platform, which was born as a result of the disconnection between people's needs and assistance in the community after the passage of Hurricane María, is a technological tool for community help and support focused on the population of elderly, disabled and marginalized people, which records the social determinants that affect the well-being of the person and facilitates the connection with the resources available in the database. Likewise, when organizations join the social resource network, they have access to inventory control of their resources, manage the cases of their participants and make referrals to those who receive help.
“With this tool, multiple benefits are offered to community providers that complement government programs. Through technology, needs and assistance allow us to make effective and transparent use of our resources and budget on a visual-geographical level. We facilitate the coordination of social assistance where citizens can report their needs through different digital media or text messages, receive assistance and maintain records by creating a history of each referral.”, indicated Javier Torres, co-founder of Sociants.
The platform makes social referrals based on thirteen social determinants established by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), including mental and physical health, access to housing, food security, disability, education, personal security, community support, job development, access to basic utilities, and others.
To raise each of our girls and boys towards a future of well-being, the collaboration of the leading organizations of the communities, neighborhoods, sectors, municipalities is "This is a fiber that accelerates these community collaborations," concluded Loinaz.
Some of the benefits that the tool offers are belonging to the directory of social resources and community services, registration of programs with the description of their services and the inventory of available resources, tools to create needs studies or surveys digital, receive data on social factors in real time, platform to make referrals and manage cases of its participants, collaboration networks with other organizations and impact measurement, interconnectivity between other data sources from all sectors and receive updated reports on the social determinants that affect our society.
Those non-profit organizations, community providers, social assistance programs and individuals interested in registering for free can visit the website https://www. refreayuda.com or by calling 787-294-5557.