A smartphone
is more important
than a wheelchair.
Because with a smartphone, a paraplegic refugee in Adré can call the agency that has the wheelchair. The clinic with the prosthetic. The driver who can carry them out when the warning comes. We send free mobile credit, direct to their phones — so they can call for help from the agencies with wheelchairs.
Get the field notes →WHO global prosthetics access estimate
UN DRR disability & disaster 2023
CFH operational metric
A clinic with steps
isn’t a clinic.
Picture a camp in eastern Chad. Paths are unpaved. The rainy season turns them to mud six months a year. The medical tent has a single concrete step at its entrance — too steep for a wheelchair, too high to step over for someone with an amputation. The food distribution point is half a kilometre away across loose sand. The shelter has no ramp. A person using a wheelchair cannot reach the aid that was meant for them.
The wheelchair is part of the problem too. WHO estimates 95% of amputees in developing countries don’t have a working prosthetic; the same gap shows up for wheelchairs, crutches, and walking frames. Even where assistive equipment does exist, it sits in a depot in the capital — and the person who needs it is in a shelter eight hours’ drive away. A phone with credit is the access point legs can’t be — the difference between being missed and being reachable.
Four steps. Zero offices.
We’re a digital-only project. No warehouse, no fieldwork, no salaried staff. The same AI tools that move billions in tech run our operations end-to-end — and the only human in the loop is the founder approving payouts. Here’s how we get credit to a wheelchair user in a camp the trucks can’t reach.
AI does the work people used to.
Application review. Translation across Arabic, French, Tigrinya, English. Document parsing. Sanctions cross-checks. Fraud signal scoring. Operational reporting. AI agents handle all of it — the same tools earning tech companies billions, repurposed for humanitarian aid. One founder. No call centre. No salaried staff in the middle.
Verified in seconds, not weeks.
Every application runs through Didit (iBeta Level 1 certified, ISO 27001) — under 3 seconds for liveness detection that catches deepfakes, masks, screen injection, and replay attacks. Document verification across 14,000+ document types in 220+ countries. Sanctions screening against UK / UN / EU lists. Washington Group disability questions for eligibility. The whole pipeline is automated; a human only steps in to give final approval.
Credit lands at internet speed.
We send mobile credit through ding’s top-up infrastructure — 850+ operators across 180+ countries. The credit lands on the recipient’s phone in seconds, anywhere there’s signal. No truck across mud, no warehouse to wheel into, no field office to navigate. Just an HTTPS request and a confirmation receipt.
A phone with credit opens every other door.
With credit on the phone, a wheelchair user can call a doctor for a home visit, message a caseworker, schedule the prosthetic fitting, send photos of a wound to a nurse, reach family who can wire transport money, or contact the agency that has the assistive equipment. The phone becomes the bridge to the rest of humanitarian aid, healthcare, and safety — without anyone having to push through sand to reach it.
The wheelchair exists. The phone is what reaches it.
Aid agencies already stock wheelchairs, prostheses, accessible transport, and home-visit teams. None of that reaches a paraplegic refugee in a shelter without a phone in their hand. Digital humanitarian aid closes the connection gap so the rest of the sector can do its job — the agencies do what they’re best at, we make sure they can be reached.
A paraplegic refugee is 2–3× more likely to be missed by aid.
Humanity & Inclusion’s 2024 research consistently finds people with disabilities are 2–3× more likely to be excluded from humanitarian aid. Mobility impairments are the largest single category — registration desks have steps, distribution queues require standing, consultations happen at fixed locations a wheelchair can’t reach. A phone routes around all of it.
Humanity & Inclusion 2024
80% of paraplegic refugees can’t evacuate without help.
UN DRR’s review of disability and disaster found only 20% of people with disabilities can evacuate immediately when warned — meaning four out of five are still in the shelter when the warning becomes a casualty count. A phone with credit lets you call ahead, to family, neighbours, the camp coordinator, anyone who can help carry — before it’s too late.
UN DRR 2023
No truck needed. No ramp needed.
Traditional aid into a remote camp needs a truck, a driver, a depot, fuel, security clearances. Then it needs ramps, accessible queues, and outreach workers to find the people who couldn’t come to the queue. We need an HTTPS request — and a phone in the recipient’s hand. The two models complement each other.
CFH OPERATIONAL MODEL
A phone makes the digital world accessible.
For a refugee with a mobility impairment, a working smartphone replaces movement the camp won’t accommodate. It’s the queue, the clinic, the bank, the bus, the help line. Below is what the same handset does across the day — every example free, already on the phone, useless without credit.
Telemedicine and home visits.
A wheelchair user with an infected stump calls the clinic, sends a photo on WhatsApp, and arranges a community health worker home visit instead of crawling across mud to a tent with steps. Telemedicine apps connect to a doctor without leaving the shelter. Prosthetic fittings get scheduled by phone. A missed appointment becomes a phone call rescheduled.
When the queue is too far, you call.
Food distribution half a kilometre across sand becomes a call to the camp coordinator to flag accessibility needs. Mobile money lets you receive remittances without queuing at a bank. Ride-hailing, where it operates, replaces walking miles to a paved road. The phone shrinks distance to a tap.
A line to the people who can help.
UNHCR caseworkers, DPOs that know where the working assistive equipment is, agencies processing your registration, NGOs running outreach in the camp, family who can wire transport money. Without credit, every one of those numbers is unreachable. With credit, the phone becomes the most powerful piece of assistive technology in the shelter.
Things people ask.
Why focus on mobility disability specifically?
Mobility impairments — wheelchair users, amputees, people with chronic injury or paralysis — are the largest single category of disability in displaced populations, and the most directly excluded by camp infrastructure. Unpaved paths, clinics with steps, queues that require standing, distribution points across difficult terrain. The infrastructure was designed for ambulatory people. A phone routes around all of it without needing the camp to be rebuilt.
Wouldn’t accessible camp infrastructure be the better fix?
Absolutely yes — and we’d love to see it happen. We’re not arguing against ramps, accessible clinics, or outreach teams. Those are still needed and we cheer the agencies that fund them. We’re saying: while that infrastructure is being built (slowly, expensively, country by country), there are people sitting in shelters today who can’t reach existing aid. A phone with credit reaches them now. Both efforts complement each other.
How do you confirm someone has a mobility disability?
We use the Washington Group Short Set on Functioning — the international standard set of disability questions used by UNHCR, the World Bank, and most national statistics offices. The application asks about difficulty walking or climbing steps. Combined with Didit’s identity verification (liveness, document, sanctions check) and a short video confirmation, we can verify eligibility without requiring medical paperwork that displaced people often don’t have.
What if someone doesn’t own a phone?
Most do — phone ownership in displaced populations sits around 70–80% according to GSMA field data, and is even higher in urban refugee populations. The barrier is almost always credit, not the handset. For refugees who don’t have a phone, we work with partner DPOs (disability organisations) to refer them to agencies that distribute handsets — we then top those handsets up.
Can you reach refugees in remote rural settlements?
If there’s mobile signal, yes. We deliver via ding’s network of 850+ operators across 180+ countries — anywhere a tower stands, our credit lands. The harder cases are formal camps in deep-rural areas where signal is intermittent. Our credit is “stored” against the recipient’s phone number; when their network comes back up, the credit is there waiting.
I work with refugees with mobility disabilities — can we partner?
Yes — please email hello@callingforhelp.org with your organisation, the country/region you operate in, and a brief on the population you serve. Partner organisations don’t receive funds from us; the relationship is referral-only. You refer eligible applicants in; we screen, verify, and top up their phones.
Real reports from the disability + displacement intersection.
Field notes on what’s actually reaching refugees with disabilities — the wins, the gaps, the workarounds. Roughly fortnightly. No fundraising. No polite begging. Just what’s happening and what we’re doing.
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