Using Technology to Prevent Crisis, Not Just Respond to It

In this International Women’s Day special, Julie Bishop speaks with Sarah Flambard, founder of the charity We Are Here, about how technology can help people find support before they reach crisis. 

Sarah and her volunteer team are developing a simple but powerful digital tool - an offline-accessible map designed to help people who are homeless, or at risk of homelessness, quickly locate nearby support services without needing mobile data, an account, or personal information. 

Their mission is simple but transformative: turn visibility into prevention because in many cases, support already exists but people just can’t find it early enough. 

This conversation also reflects this year’s International Women’s Day theme, “Give to Gain.” Sarah and the entire We Are Here team are volunteers, bringing together expertise from law, data, technology and marketing to create something that can genuinely change outcomes for people facing homelessness. 

Julie and Sarah discuss: 

• Why homelessness is often invisible until it becomes a crisis 
• How simple, accessible technology can help people find support sooner 
• Designing digital tools that work in stressful, low-connectivity situations 
• How volunteer-powered innovation can create real social impact 
• Why prevention is often more powerful than building new services 

A powerful conversation about technology, compassion and the impact of people coming together to create change. 

If you’d like to support the work of We Are Here, you can contact Sarah on LinkedIn or by email sarah.flambard@weareheremap.com 

You can also connect with Julie, Host & CEO IT Naturally on LinkedIn. 

Visit the IT Naturally website

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Transcript

Julie Bishop (00:00)
Good day, and today we're talking about an incredible new project that really is using tech for good.

My guest is Sarah Flambard, and she's founder of the charity We Are Here.

And she's creating a digital app that really helps people who are either homeless or at risk of homelessness really quickly locate nearby support without even needing mobile data.

So Sarah, let's start by me asking you in your own words, what is it you're building?

Sarah Flambard (00:28)
when someone is close to crisis, the problem is rarely that support does not exist. It's more that it cannot be found early enough. And by the time someone is rough sleeping, we've already missed several opportunities where intervention could have happened. So at We Are Here we are building that simple offline accessible digital map to support people that are

at risk of homelessness, finding what they need basically in seconds. And that without having to create ⁓ an account or having to share personal details. So at the heart, we're really about turning the visibility into prevention.

Julie Bishop (01:12)
It's such an exciting idea and I know the first time you spoke you told me a wonderful story about somebody who wasn't able to access a food bank. Could you share that with our listeners?

Sarah Flambard (01:25)
Yes, yes. I mean, to give you a bit of context, am a lawyer by trade, by profession. And basically during the pandemic, like a lot of people, my entire team was made redundant. And that really forced me to slow down and to kind of like assess what was important to me. And one of those things was to give back. So I did spend a lot of time volunteering and also when walking in my neighborhood, talking to people basically that were

rough sleeping. And I met two very key persons I would say. The first one was Simon who was actually sitting always kind of 50 meters away from a church that was delivering free food and didn't know about it.

And the second was Robert, a 74 year old man that basically I was meeting at Foodbanks, I kept on bumping at Foodbanks, and one day he came up to me and he was like, Sarah, what is your Instagram account? And I was like, and he pulled out his phone with his smartphone and that kind of like...

stop my misconception that I had that a lot of people didn't have smartphones. And that kind of like how the idea came around of that map with the support kind of like at their fingertips.

Julie Bishop (02:49)
I think it's lovely and that story really helps us understand the preconceptions we have that people won't have access to smartphones when clearly a lot of people do and that we think people know what's going on around the place but actually they don't. That was really, really good stories. And we can often think about homelessness

something quite visible. We're seeing people that are living on the streets, people that are rough sleeping. You talk quite a lot about hidden homelessness. Can you tell us about that?

Sarah Flambard (03:28)
Yes, I mean I was the first one to kind of picture rough sleeping when thinking about homelessness, but that's actually the tip of the iceberg of the homelessness iceberg. ⁓

When we are talking about homelessness and when we're talking about hidden homelessness, we're basically including the young person, the young worker or students that is actually sofa surfing at his friend's place because he cannot afford rent. We're talking about the family that is living in temporary accommodation after receiving a no-fault eviction notice. ⁓ We're talking as well about the women and the children that live in unsafe

housing

and that don't necessarily can afford three meals a day. I think it's really important to of like anchor that into data because right now in the UK I think it's 14 million people that live in poverty on a population of 69 million, 14 million.

That scale really highlights how many households in the UK are living in fragile, financially fragile conditions and in a form of invisibility which delays the support. And so that's what we are Here is for, is to kind of like make sure that no one remains invisible and that ⁓ everyone can access the support earlier rather than later.

Julie Bishop (04:59)
can you let us know why, if somebody has that information, how that changes their outcome?

Sarah Flambard (05:07)
crisis actually escalates, can escalate very quickly. ⁓ and if someone can find the right support before the eviction, before the debt spiral, before the mental health deteriorates, the outcome can look very different because in itself,

homelessness and rough sleeping is a trauma. So the longer someone remains in those situations, the more difficult getting out of the situation is going to be. So sometimes really the solution isn't about creating new services, but it's really about shortening that time it takes to reach help and support.

Julie Bishop (05:52)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

What does good tech look like for people when you've got you've got low battery, you don't trust people, you're in a very stressful situation?

Sarah Flambard (06:07)
Well, mean, good tech specifically in crisis adapts to the user and not the other way around. So it does load quickly. It works offline. It doesn't demand unnecessary personal data. It does protect basically the privacy of the user. It's simple, but it's impactful.

Julie Bishop (06:32)
So Sarah, you're working with Crisis and other leading homelessness charities to go into pilot. How's that going?

Sarah Flambard (06:40)
Yes, well, mean, it's very exciting. We've been working kind of in the background for years for this. And now we are about to pilot with a grassroots organisation. The goal is really to test the usability and to make sure that what we are building respond to the needs and constraints of both the people that are in crisis and the organisation that supports them.

Julie Bishop (07:07)
You're also building something that's behind the scenes for organisations. What difference does that make?

Sarah Flambard (07:14)
Well, basically at the pilot stage, we really focus on the visibility of the services. But at the full production phase, our delivery plan includes features that basically allow organisations to signal their capacity. And that has three clear benefits. The first one is to avoid wasted journeys for the people that are in crisis so that they don't end up actually having from going from one

Julie Bishop (07:20)
Yeah.

Yes.

Sarah Flambard (07:44)
or to the other and being told capacity. The second is actually that organisation can then improve themselves, their signposting accuracy when they are themselves at capacity and need to redirect someone in crisis.

Julie Bishop (07:45)
Exactly.

Sarah Flambard (08:01)
And over time, this will help to produce aggregated insights ⁓ that will basically help our local authorities to help identify gaps in coverage. So typically, thanks to that functionality,

we will be able to say, ⁓ in East London there was on Tuesday, there was no services for women. In Brent, there was actually no services on Wednesday for young people, et cetera, et cetera. We're really sequencing that carefully. So building with the grassroots organisations and the local authorities. So that's really the goal of the pilot that we're currently conducting.

Julie Bishop (08:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, and it's really key, isn't it? Because I think it can be very disheartening for people if they go to a food bank but actually they're there on the wrong day or they don't have any food left. It's, you know, they've had their number of people or if somebody's rough sleeping and they go to a night shelter and the night shelter's full or they don't know the rules for that night shelter so they've got a dog they're not allowed in or whatever the rules are.

it can I think be very disheartening and when you're already feeling very low, already feeling very disempowered, it can make life a lot harder. So I think this is really, really

So you're running this as a registered charity and it's powered by some really incredible volunteers that you've got. ⁓

Tell me a bit about your volunteers and then tell me about how you're sharing responsibility with them.

Sarah Flambard (09:42)
So yes, we are fully volunteered, ⁓ powered. We are 15 volunteers. We all have basically full-time careers in finance, in data science, in marketing, et cetera. But we've basically all chosen to kind of like transform our outrage and our feeling of powerlessness in the face of the scale of the issue into actions

we're using our skills and we're applying our skills to something that is bigger than ourselves. ⁓ And I can't emphasise that enough, I think that volunteering, specifically when aligned with expertise and a purpose, can create an exponential impact. And it just reminds us as well how... ⁓

Julie Bishop (10:30)
Yeah.

Sarah Flambard (10:35)
change can only happen if we show up individually and collectively. So, definitely invite everyone to volunteer and see for themselves the change that they can

Julie Bishop (10:51)
And

Sarah, you're leading this team, though you've got some people that are very experienced in their own fields working for you. How do you...

get an organisation to work when it's volunteers. You might be the boss but they can walk out if they want to. They can do what they like. So how do you manage to corral a group of volunteers because it's always a challenge. It's harder than running a business.

Sarah Flambard (11:20)
I mean, I think, well, there's a part where we are, most of us are coming from the corporate world, I would say. ⁓ And so we do, we are bringing kind of like that corporate discipline and that corporate governance rule into the charity, into our organisation. ⁓

And then I think we are all, as I was just saying, we all want, that's something that we all want to do. We see the potential impact that we can create. And so it's not complicated to actually motivate the truth because we know what we're doing and we know that we're doing something that is good. So yeah, that is a fuel in itself.

Julie Bishop (12:05)
That shared vision that you all have, that shared desire to really make a difference but you know how you're going to do it is really, really powerful.

Sarah Flambard (12:15)
It is, it is. we always say, sometimes that hope and that coupled with that purpose and expertise can move mountains. So if we collaborate, we can move mountains.

Julie Bishop (12:30)
And

what gives you hope while you're doing this? What drives you?

Sarah Flambard (12:36)
Well

Again, I would say it's the people, it's always the people. It's the frontline staff that are showing up every day, whether it's raining, whether there's funding, whether there's recognition. That's the frontline organisation that don't lose hope and that are still eager to collaborate to find solutions to this growing crisis. That's also the people in crisis that when I meet them and tell them about

are out there like when can we use it that can be helpful and it's also my team again those people that show up with their time and their expertise so yeah it's always people definitely

Julie Bishop (13:23)
I tend

to always agree with you on that one. if this app develops in the way that you've got your vision, what's going to feel different? What's going to be the impact of it?

Sarah Flambard (13:34)
So our goal is really fewer people reaching crisis simply because they didn't have access to the information. So what will change is basically earlier intervention, ⁓ fewer preventable escalations, and more collaboration. That's really the measure of our success.

Julie Bishop (13:56)
Sarah,

it's been absolutely brilliant talking to you. I love your enthusiasm, I love your vision and I love what you're doing for some people that clearly need your support. And I think when we publish this, we'll put details so that people can contact you if they want to see more. yeah.

Sarah Flambard (14:18)
Yes, that would be amazing because again, we definitely need the support of the IT space and whether that's actually in terms of access to kind of like organisation that can provide for free if possible, access to cloud storage, cloud credits, but also funding as well, access to people that can fund social impact and digital inclusion.

So yes, please do reach out to

Julie Bishop (14:52)
So if anyone out there is able to support Sarah with this, please do get in touch with her or get in touch with me. And I'm really excited that I think in about six to 12 months, we'll be having another version of the podcast when Sarah will be saying, this is what we're doing and this is how the application is developing. Thank you so much, Sarah.

Sarah Flambard (15:14)
Thank you for having me, Julie.