Afrilanthropy asbl

The project

Riding the Rainbow is a versatile project aimed at supporting the social integration of refugees, the well-being of young refugees, and the circular economy. Our application allows residents to easily make donations and get in touch with refugees in their region, thus facilitating the inclusion of a growing demographic group within Luxembourgish society.

Indeed, it was by seeing the large number of children fleeing the war in Ukraine that the idea for this project was born. We wanted to defend their right to play and help them settle in their new country.

As part of this project, we also help refugees to participate in sports and creative activities and pursue their extracurricular interests. We want to support their emotional and social well-being as valuable members of their new community.

The application has been operational since September 2022 and, in May 2023, it already had over 1,400 users. Next to the application, our non-profit organization has established partnerships with 40 organizations supporting refugees, defending human rights, cycling, and even recycling to achieve its goals.

We were fortunate to gain the support of well-known individuals with a strong media presence for the project, and we now have a team of ambassadors dedicated to raising awareness about the project, also in other countries.

The achievement

Reaching refugee communities is one of the main challenges we have encountered. But we are increasingly seeking to collaborate with refugee aid organizations that manage accommodation facilities, such as the Luxembourg Red Cross, which uses the application to establish more direct contact with the refugee community. We also encourage beneficiaries to share their experience of the application with members of their community. As it is generally easier to reach donors, an imbalance between supply and demand occurs.

In addition, the use of a platform that is not yet known always generates a rather low level of trust, both from refugees and from donors. To overcome this mistrust, the team constantly optimizes security features, including two-factor authentication and a more efficient reporting function.

Another challenge is to maintain high levels of engagement with the application and ensure that donations are completed. To address this, it is planned to include gamification elements in order to encourage donors to follow up on requests for articles.

This project, however, does not end with donations. Donations work more like the stone that sets an individual journey in motion. Some children, for example, have already been able to join a local soccer club thanks to the donor. Other refugees have even found work through the meetings facilitated as part of the project.

We want to make this application a prosperous and autonomous platform with 10,000 users in Luxembourg. But above all, we want to change attitudes towards refugee communities and the approaches to support them: we want to move from charity to solidarity. With this project, we hope to humanize refugees and fight against the negative stereotypes that exist in part due to misunderstanding and ignorance about the experiences these people have lived through. Next to that, the project aims to make accommodations for refugees more stimulating for children and to generate even more benefits for the parents and guardians of young refugees.

With the numerous crises currently affecting the world, the population of refugees in Europe continues to increase. Host societies must be inclusive spaces of belonging and not exclusive centers where the trauma of young refugees is exacerbated by a sense of rejection. In addition to receiving a donation, refugees need to be welcomed with a smiling face and to feel that they have a place in their new home in order to feel capable of becoming active and productive citizens in the future.

There is a huge contrast between those who live in abundance and newly arrived families who often had to leave everything behind.