How it works.

Calling for Help is a digital-only project. There are no warehouses. No field staff. No logistics chain. The whole pipeline is one founder, a stack of Ai agents, and the same APIs the tech industry uses for billions in commercial work — pointed at humanitarian access. From a refugee submitting an application to credit landing on their phone, the median time is five minutes. Here’s the full path.

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A woman in a wheelchair sits in a refugee camp, making a phone call as her spouse and child cook on a small stove

A woman in a wheelchair sits in a refugee camp, making a phone call as her spouse and child cook on a small stove.

Why do we use Ai images? We don’t use photos of disabled refugees — their dignity, identity and safety come first. We’re powered by Ai and don’t spend funds on royalty payments for photos of refugees taken while in crisis.

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Step 1 — The application.

A refugee with a disability fills in a short web application — about five minutes long. They tell us where they are, what disability they have (using Washington Group methodology questions, not self-described diagnosis), and which mobile number they want topped up. They can apply on someone else’s behalf — a family member, a friend who supports them, a caseworker, an NGO field worker — and the form asks who’s submitting and on whose behalf, so the credit ultimately reaches the disabled refugee, not the intermediary.

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Step 2 — Identity + disability verification.

An Ai agent reviews the application. Identity is verified through Didit (iBeta Level 1, ISO 27001, sub-3-second liveness check) — this prevents fraudulent applications without requiring an in-person interview. Disability eligibility runs against the Washington Group questions plus a short video confirmation from the applicant. Sanctions screening hits UK / UN / OFAC / EU lists. The whole review typically takes under two minutes.

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Step 3 — Top-up.

Approved applications hit a top-up API that supports 180+ countries. The credit lands on the refugee’s phone in seconds, sometimes before they’ve finished closing the application tab. They can use it for calls, SMS, or mobile data — whatever they need that month.

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Step 4 — Audit + the founder check.

Every payout has a founder-approval step. The founder (Coop, the only human in the loop) reviews the Ai agents’ decisions, signs off, and the audit log is permanent. This is the only manual step in the whole pipeline — a deliberate guardrail. The Ai never sends credit on its own.

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Why this works.

Traditional aid is structurally slow because it’s structurally physical. Calling for Help routes around physicality: top-up APIs reach where trucks can’t; Ai screening replaces in-person registration interviews that disabled refugees often can’t access; one founder running the whole stack means decisions happen in minutes, not weeks. The model isn’t novel because we invented it — every layer existed before. What’s novel is pointing the layers at this specific population.

One application. One Ai review. One top-up. One human approving. That’s the whole pipeline.

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