On Empowering Action Through Innovative Technologies - A Conversation with Rhiana Spring

Episode Transcript

Claire  00:00

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Narratives of Purpose. My name is Claire Murigande. I am a scientist by training a TEDx speaker and your host on this show. This podcast is dedicated to amplifying social impact by bringing you inspiring individual stories of ordinary people who are making extraordinary social impact within their communities and around the world. So if you're looking for a programme that showcases unique stories of changemakers, stories of people who are contributing to make a difference in society, and at the same time you want to be inspired to take action, then look no further, you are in the right place. So get comfortable, and listen to my conversations.

 

Claire  01:05

We are gearing towards the end of season three, and this month, we will discuss technology for impact. In the first episode of July my guest is Rhiana Spring. Rhiana is an international human rights expert. She is the executive director and founder of Spring ACT or Spring A.C.T. and A.C.T stands for Action, Compassion, Technology. In this conversation Rhiana shares the work she is carrying out with her team in connecting human rights and artificial intelligence to empower individuals in vulnerable situations through practical tools. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review our show on your favourite podcast app. This will help other listeners find our podcast and further amplify the stories we are sharing on Narratives of Purpose. For now, listen to Rhiana's entrepreneurial endeavours to help the most vulnerable using modern technology.

 

Claire  02:16

Hi, Rhiana. Welcome to the podcast.

 

Rhiana  02:18

Hi, Claire. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

 

Claire  02:21

My pleasure. I'm actually really, really thrilled to have you on the show today, because I have seen that there's so many exciting things going on with your company recently with Spring ACT and I'm really looking forward first of all, to sharing your journey and everything that you're doing with our listeners. And also to learn more about where you're headed. But before we go into that, first things first, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners, who is Rihanna?

 

Rhiana  02:45

I'm Rhiana Spring, I'm an international human rights expert and founder and executive director of Spring ACT, which stands for Action, Compassion Technology. Before founding Spring ACT, I was in human rights. I was working pretty much across the whole globe defending human rights of the most vulnerable people in courts of Argentina, with the UN in eastern West Africa, volunteering all across the African continent as well, and in the Philippines, with their foreign ministry.

 

Claire  03:15

So you are based in Switzerland, and if I'm not mistaken in Bern? And that's where you founded your organisation, your company. So my first question is how did that all start? Obviously, you have your background in human rights. And the overall mission, if I could put it in one sentence, of Spring ACT is to empower human rights and empower people to act through technology. So where does the whole idea come from?

 

Rhiana  03:43

Yes, exactly. So our mission is to connect human rights and technology and our vision is to empower people through innovative technologies to take action and help eliminate global social injustice. It all started actually, when I was based with the UN, I was in HR in Dhaka in Senegal, West Africa. I was working in general for human rights, and they had five refugees come to my office asking for help. They had come to my predecessor then their predecessor for five years, they had been looking for help for their specific situations and nothing had been done. The organisation I was working for, I was in HR and it wasn't our mandate. We also just didn't have the money or the budget to help. But I was so frustrated that nothing had been done. They were very specific in what they needed. One example was an Ivorian refugee who had fled multiple wars, who had fled the war in the Ivory Coast, then he went to get The Gambia, he then became a leader of the refugees in Gambia and then was imprisoned and tortured in The Gambia then fled to Mali where it wasn't safe and then finally came to Senegal. So this whole trauma that had happened and he was just there, the only thing he wanted was to put his kid Emanuela into school. And because of his refugee status, she was too old for the level of the class that should have been in, and I just arrived in the country I didn't know what to do. I don't have kids myself. So I was just like "what do I do?" Basically I was overwhelmed. It's okay to be overwhelmed when you're faced with these injustices. And then by chance, I went to lunch with somebody from the Swiss Embassy at the time. And I just mentioned this case, and she knew the country really well. And so within a weekend, she had found three solutions for Emmanuella. And within the month, she was in school. Something that five years, multiple organisations, people didn't manage to do. And this is not because my friend and I are some kind of 'superwomen'. It was just by chance that I mentioned it to this person over lunch, and by chance she knew what to do. And that's where the whole idea kind of started. It's to replace my friend and I with technology that can connect people in vulnerable situations to the organisations most likely to help them, because I truly believe we have all the resources in the world, financial and information to help every single person, we just need to connect them. Because in this case, the refugee knew exactly what he needed. And there were organisations that were there to help exactly that case. But we, I mean, all of us are overwhelmed with the information out there at the moment. And we just need some kind of guidance to see where to look and what to look for. So that's when it started. And it was a long process, it was very slow. And actually, at the beginning I was going to do kiosks where you could go and look for help. And then it was the local website, and then it was an app that I was developing. Then my mission ended, I tried to stay as long as I could, then came back to Switzerland and the pandemic hit. And we were friends who were sitting around like "we have to do something, domestic violence is rising so drastically, that we just really felt we needed to do something". And so we took the technology that I had been developing, and rather than just people in vulnerable situations as a whole, we honed it into survivors of domestic violence, guiding them to the support services and shelters that they needed. And providing them a tool which we call the "Digital Safe" to help them gather potential evidence and then from there, it just took off.

 

Claire  07:28

So basically, if I'm understanding that correctly, what you developed locally, when you were in Dakar in Senegal? Is that still alive, so to speak? Or did you shift to something else where you're focusing on domestic violence? Because as you just explained that you started more locally, and then from Switzerland, you focused more on domestic violence.

 

Rhiana  07:48

Thank you for asking, people don't ask that, they always focus on Sophia, the Chatbot because it is the world's first chatbot for survivors of domestic violence. I love it, because people never ask me that question. And it's not live yet, but we're launching that this year. So we were again, connecting, it's just everywhere we look. We had put that on pause, because it was enough to do one project. But then we were contacted by this organisation called Women Plus Plus who are based in Zurich, their mission is to bring diversity into tech. And they designed this hands-on software development programme, that was specifically designed for women, but any gender was welcome, that would then develop one of our projects for us within six weeks with three different teams. And so that's what they did. It's called Bots. And we have now three different prototypes, each one of them absolutely wonderful. We're just onboarding the people that we need to merge these three prototypes together, and then launch in Senegal towards autumn this year.

 

Claire  09:00

That sounds amazing. So basically, you had the Dots and you alluded to "Sophia the Chatbot". And that's actually where we met because a mutual friend of ours introduced us and it was the day you were launching the Sophia Chatbot. So tell me about this chatbot, what is it exactly?

 

Rhiana  09:17

So yeah, like I said, Sophia is the world's first chatbot for survivors of domestic violence, helping them gather potential evidence, assess their rights, and learn about their options. So she functions on the principle of GAL, 'gather potential evidence', 'assess your rights', 'learn your options', and we launched in Zurich in December 2021. And since then, over 4000 people have chatted to Sophia, and right now we're in Peru launching her here as the next step. And what Sophia does is she's a chatbot, which is a robot that is designed to have conversations with humans. She is pre-programmed and the answers are pre-programmed so that she can't misunderstand anyone in this very delicate situation. At the moment, she is available on Telegram and Viber. WhatsApp and Signal are to come. You go into Telegram for example, and you search for it, as if you'd search for me, you don't need to save any number or anything, just as if you'd search for Rhiana, you search for Sophia Chatbot and she's there. And you can start chatting at the moment in English, French, German, and Spanish. So you can either chat to her about what are the signs of domestic abuse, which gives you examples of the different types of domestic abuse and the different warning signals for that. She can help you learn what you need to know if you want to leave, because leaving is a very dangerous situation. And she really guides you on what you need to take, what you need to consider, etc. And then and then the Digital Safe, like I mentioned before, you can create a Digital Safe, where you can upload potential evidence, photos, recordings, documents, reports from the police reports from the doctor, anything basically a journal, you can upload and it's saved on servers in Switzerland and it's completely encrypted, so we can't access it, nobody can access them but you, and they're there until you yourself decide to take action. It's just there and you decide what to do next. So these options are available globally. At the moment, Sophia is available in 222 countries, where you type and she asks you where you are and if you type anything but Switzerland, she gives you one national organisation where you are right now that you can contact. Because we launched in Switzerland the first localised information is Switzerland. So you type in Switzerland she asks you which state, for example Bern, and then she gives you localised information. Where's the nearest shelter to you? Where are the nearest support services? Where can you find legal aid where you are? And what are your local rights as a survivor, but also as a person - Can I get a divorce? What do I need? How can I get custody for my children? All these things. She runs you through your different options. Our goal is now to localise the information, country by country. So at the moment, for example, if you take Peru, you'll just get one national organisation. But the aim is to then have really these depict depending on where you are in the country. That's the nearest support that you can find.

 

Claire  12:31

So you launched in December in Switzerland, and now you're launching a new country in Peru, what are your plans for 2022 in terms of countries and reach that you want to achieve?

 

Rhiana  12:40

We have a whole annual plan, we have everything. But it's just the way startups generally are, we just go where the wind takes us - Peru was not on the books, but then we hired the most amazing Head of Operations, who's from Peru, she's so passionate about bringing Sophia to Peru that she already within her first week found five partners, and potential funding for Peru. And that's how we came here. So we will only go to a country where we have a local partnership, it's out of the question to do anything else because there's local customs and laws and culture that we cannot know from abroad. So that's the number one criteria is local partnership, and potential funding, because we are a startup and we're a nonprofit and that's a huge, huge issue. It's a very frustrating issue. I get asked how much how much budget we need, and literally, if Melinda Gates would call me, and give me "here's a billion or here's millions," we could literally launch to every single country in the world within the year, if we had the budget to do so. So that's kind of our criteria, to launch together with obviously the index of domestic violence and where is the urgent need to go. So Peru is now - this month, and then we will launch in Senegal in autumn again, Dots back in Senegal, and we will organise the launch of Sophia there as well also, because the whole project was founded there, but also my deputy director and right hand woman is is Senegalese and lives in Senegal, and again, very passionate to bring Sophia to Senegal and that's why we're going there. Apart from that we will have different events. So for example, doing a big fundraising campaign starting on the 5th of May called the 555 campaign where you run five kilometres, you donate five francs or dollars or whatever, and you nominate five people to do the same again. Our goal really again for 2022 is just the funding, it's just really needed to get it up and to drive membership memberships to us help us sustain and scale Sophia.

 

Claire  14:49

So if anybody among the listeners, our founders or investors know people who would be interested, you're open from business, right?

 

Rhiana  14:59

Thank you. Yes. Yes, you don't even need to know someone, you just need to even go on our website, just becoming a member is a massive help for us. For those outside of Switzerland, we're in association, legally, and you become a member and you pay an annual fee of anything, a low income, 45 francs, a normal income 95 francs and up to Patreon level or superstar level 250/500 francs, and it's an annual donation. And that alone is huge for us.

 

Claire  15:28

So coming back to your entrepreneurial journey, I imagine there's a lot of challenges along the way. There continue to be challenges and so on. Can you tell us about that?

 

Rhiana  15:37

Honestly, funding is the biggest issue we have. Because we're so passionate about getting this technology out there that it's very hard. And I suppose that was the biggest challenge, because I was so focused on providing the solution, that I'm like, "Oh, the funding will come, they'll see our amazing project prototype, and then they'll fund us," and then we thought we would get this funding. And we didn't and that was a little collapse for us, and then we got back up and started fighting. But I'd also say, dealing with the passion paradox is kind of...you're so passionate, you just want to work nonstop. But you need to find some kind of balance. There's a book called The Passion Paradox and they say, 'Don't even bother about balance. If you're following your passion, balance is not really something you can find.' So I just see that I can spread out my energy as much as I can, and move forward. I really related to that, as well as dealing with my own energy and the project and the company or organisation is trusting my own gut, despite many, many doubts. Doubts from myself, but also from people around me. So that's what I started with, especially with Dots, because it's something that was in Senegal, it's very far away. And people didn't really see the point of this and why would I want to start a company that's really, really tiring? These friends are well intentioned people. But you need to just trust your gut and be like, "yes, this is the way forward." I think that's an interesting lesson to learn.

 

Claire  17:22

And if we go a bit more into the specifics. Obviously, you have a diverse team, because you have developers and so on, and you have to cover different aspects of the solutions that you're creating. And one in particular, I'm really curious about is technology. Dots is an app, and the other one is a chatbot. And these are sensitive matters right? How do you ensure that everything is safe? You mentioned earlier that everything is encrypted for the Chatbot and it's in service in Switzerland. It's always difficult to understand because everything is digital nowadays, and you never know where your data is going. So how do you cover that?

 

Rhiana  17:59

Excellent question. I'm really glad you asked that. Because I am a human rights expert by trade, like there's no way ever that I would trade data for anything, because in my personal life I'm one of those people that goes "Cookies - No, no, no, no, no!" It's really embedded in my personal that online privacy is very important. So that also translates into our strategies. We've put in a lot of work, a lot of research, a lot of discussions and a lot of strategies in place to guarantee this. So for example, our servers are in Switzerland, and they're with Microsoft. So the banks in Switzerland, who care most about privacy are with Microsoft, and they have servers in Switzerland. So we're very sure that we use those kinds of services so they're also protected by the data rights and laws in Switzerland. We specifically picked a country where we have the highest standards that we have to follow. So that's one thing. And then the other thing, especially with the Digital Safe, of course it's the most sensitive that you could possibly ask for so we have an amazing tech team that works on it. We have privacy and security engineers working alongside us in our tech team, internal, but also as volunteers and consultants coming on board. So it's actually a wonderful story that I was reading, I was reading a book about coders to kind of understand the team better and everything. The author talks about a privacy hacker and he was creating a tool called Effective.AS  they're supposed to organise activists and their activism and I thought that sounded really cool. So I reached out to him and he's now on our team volunteering with all his skills - he's a privacy hacker, this is what he does, to make sure that we're really, really safe. He's put into place together with the privacy engineer and the engineer in my team who are fantastic, really, really intelligent, fantastic people as well. They created this whole system that when tech people look at it, they're like "I didn't even know this existed". I can't honestly can't stress enough how important this is to me personally. Then we have another who just recently came onboard, another cryptographer and security expert who has worked for domestic violence organisations, and has thrown so many questions like "Have you thought about this? Have you thought about this? This is a solution. This is a solution" And then constantly review it.

 

Claire  20:23

Speaking about impact, obviously, you're still at the beginning. You previously said that 4000 people, if I'm not mistaken, have already used this Chatbot? Do you know how that has impacted their lives? What was the real change or influence? Do you have an idea? Is it something you can share more about or or not?

 

Rhiana  20:42

It is something every media outlet asks me. And I'm like the whole point is that it's anonymous. And that's really important. So with Sophia, the main aim is to lower the threshold. So Sophia is not, it's not supposed to replace anyone. It's really supplementary support to the support systems already available. And the aim is really to lower the threshold through being anonymous and 24/7 available to really bring the people to a human being to talk to them, and hopefully get them out. So we have very little data at the moment. We are onboarding a data science team that will take the anonymized data, again, we have no idea who - where - what. But at what time maybe people are chatting that we can help in that sense. We just know at the moment how many people in that's over 4000. But what has happened, since we've launched or since we've become known, actually, even before we launched, that survivors have reached out to us saying "what can I do to help? I wish this existed when I was in an abusive relationship. I think I would have left way earlier." Women are fierce people. And just so positive, the most horrendous thing has happened to them. And their drive and their positivity and outlook on life is incredible. And they've now become part of our team in helping us improve Sophia.

 

Claire  22:09

And going back to visibility. You mentioned that survivors have reached out to you. But I've also noticed you have received quite some distinctions recently, and one of them is from the president of Switzerland himself Ignazio Cassis, and we recognise Spring ACT as Swiss a Future Prize. I think you won that prize, right? So having more attention on what you're doing, is that supporting you a lot? Or is it more work for you to be out there and talk about what you're doing and advocate? How does it feel?

 

Rhiana  22:43

Finally being recognised like this, I can't put like honestly cannot put it into words. And the President himself handing us the prize, the head of the SCC, the Department of International Cooperation of the Foreign Ministry, a woman I look up to incredibly, she's so fierce and intelligent, and a go-getter. And here we are, she's on my left and the President is on my right and everyone's smiling and beaming. And that was quite an amazing moment, getting the praise from the President and then the room. The tables turned, because before, it was always asking "Hi, I'm working on this project. Please can we have a meeting?" And then they flocked to us! An ambassador was like "here's my card, I'm an expert in scaling, come and see me here." "I'm from the UN", "I'm inter agency coordination. Let's see what we can do.This was part of the International Cooperation Forum." Other ambassadors would come and say, "Tell me about your project, we're proud!" They would tell  me how proud they were about their technological advancements in their own teams and departments. And it was very surreal, especially that period, because March was insane with everything that we had done in March. Also my deputy director, she lives in Senegal and for multiple reasons, within a week, practice staff came to Switzerland, we went straight to a hackathon in St. Gallen to kind of kickstart a new project for 36 hours with over 300 participants, nine hacker teams, we were in our little booth at three o'clock in the morning. People coming and saying "This is what we were thinking of interpreting your challenge this way or this way." Sleeping in a corner in our sleeping bag. This is literally right from Senegal, then getting a train going all the way to Geneva and going and presenting Sophia at her stand and then the prize. And then later we came to Peru due to multiple reasons. One thing as a founder, holidays are very hard to get so I'm like "I need a holiday. Why don't we just move our headquarters here?" because we don't work together physically anyway, being in Zurich, Bern and Dhakar, and so we were working here and then going on holiday. Yeah, so surreal. It took a while to sink in that it happened.

 

Claire  25:13

I mean, honestly, everything is in the beginning. And you're really also having this amazing momentum and riding the wave, right? But to this point, can you say that you already have a certain understanding of all this process? And what are you keeping with you to continue moving forward?

 

Rhiana  25:30

Honestly, we learned everyday, everyday, there's something I learned and personally, I love that I'm a very curious person. And so my team and I, we're always like watching masterclasses, webinars, books - we're reading to continuously learn. I would say, one of the key things is, I knew beforehand, but putting it into practice was an amazing experience is diversity. So having studied human rights and worked in human rights, I knew diversity is an absolute key. But then being in the position, as the director, to really prioritise diversity was really interesting for multiple reasons. One, is that you read about it, but you have to put a lot of effort or focus into diversity, you can't go "We are diverse organisation," You have to put into place certain strategies. So for example, we wanted to find an engineer, and ensure the engineering position would be open to all genders. So even though we need an engineer 100%, we said 40% to 100%, because especially in Switzerland, many mothers don't return full time to the workforce. So if we say 100%, that just excludes all mothers in Switzerland, because they can't do that. With flexible working hours, women are encouraged to apply. Non binary people are encouraged to apply all these words you have to do then really put it in different places where you advertise, but now also my team through a value based organisation, and we have the same values and with that foundation, kind of nothing else matters. Because with the different ways of thinking the different backgrounds in everything because we have the same values. We just break barriers everyday basically. And really that's what I would like to tell everyone, people know "ish", but they don't put it into action, I wish they would more. Read all the studies. Diversity is good for every aspect of your organisation, including revenue, your revenue goes up if your board, and your team is more diverse. If you don't want to believe me from a human rights perspective, moral perspective, just look at the numbers.

 

Claire  27:48

I couldn't agree more. And I have to say you're just confirming the discussions I've had on the podcast with other guests talking about diversity and inclusion, and the message is always the same, right? You can only win from diversity. So I previously asked what are your plans for 2022? But now looking more into the long term, right? You're working at the intersection of human rights and technology. Obviously technology is taking a lot of space in our lives, especially since the pandemic and everything is going digital, wherever we are based on this planet. How do you see this moving forward? Say in the near future, let's not go further than five years. Specifically in your area of expertise, speaking of human rights and technology, how do you see this evolving?

 

Rhiana  28:36

I hope in five years, I think it's evolving fast. And then I look in my surroundings "Yeah, this is working this is going" and then I look around and I'm like, "it's still very slow." I think we're definitely going towards digitalization of human rights, the potential of technology in this field is limitless. And it's great for us that we were considered very innovative, great for us. But I'm surprised. We're in 2022 it shouldn't be innovative to use a chatbot to fight injustice. It shouldn't be. So we see every company nowadays has a chatbot on their website, but NGOs, which are constantly understaffed, underfunded, there's a huge issue in the sector. They're getting there, they really are, I see more and more NGOs actually having digital people in tech like dedicated to digitalization in their organisation. So we're getting there. I wish I could make it a bit faster. Because just the potential for technology to fight global social and injustices is amazing. You can reach millions of people by sitting at a desk in Switzerland. It's just you can get all the expertise. So Sophia has the expertise of so many domestic violence experts, human rights experts. One wonderful thing about our organisation is that we have a lot of volunteers that help us. Sophia wouldn't have been launched without them. So we have 80 volunteers from across the globe, including from the high seas, a Navy officer, who illustrates for us from his Navy boat, but also we have expertise from domestic violence organisations, experts, from doctors and psychologists from lawyers, IT people. But also an international pianist and Navy officer, who really reflect all the different aspects of humanity that bring in to make Sophia the best she can. And then she's available anywhere, in rural areas if someone lives in a little farmhouse, or bustling Addis Ababa, everywhere, she's there, and you get the knowledge of all these people accumulated. And it's, yeah, we're facing unprecedented challenges as humans, and I just think we need an unprecedented solution. And for me, personally, I think that really is technology.

 

Claire  31:06

I really love the idea of this, you know, using the collective knowledge and making it available for everyone, everywhere all the time. Right. And I love that concept. And it's true that as you say, technology is enabling that and also the interconnections. I mean, just for me, it's a very simple example, but even with my show with the podcast, if I didn't have Zoom, I probably wouldn't have had half of my guests on the show.

 

Rhiana  31:31

Exactly. But it needed the pandemic, for us to realise that right? Zoom always existed, but we didn't realise that we could actually use that the way that we do now. And the price that we won was actually in the category, "Think global act local." So that's exactly that to combine the global resources and the local knowledge.

 

Claire  31:51

So bright future ahead, as long as we tap into everybody's potential and have diverse teams.

 

Rhiana  31:58

Yes, exactly. Recognising every person's leadership, I think, is also a key thing that I've learned is that every person, no matter what rank you have, what title you have, how old you are, everyone can be a leader in their everyday actions. And that's something that I was so excited to actually implement in my organisation. We have 19/20 year olds that bring fantastic ideas to management procedures. So to bring the experience with the young and foster that energy, and that drive and the innovation that the younger generation has, with the experience and the knowledge of people that are older, it really brings the best results.

 

Claire  32:41

Now, towards the end of each conversation I have on the podcast, I always go through my quick three questions where I try to get a bit of an insight into what type of music to listen to? Or what books you read? And if you have any recommendation for our listeners, the first one is, do you have something at the moment that you're listening to on repeat, so to speak music wise, or a book that you're reading at the moment?

 

Rhiana  33:05

Yes, I do have a playlist that I've created that I listen to repeatedly, it's Afro beats, I love Afro beats. And this is especially Yemi Alade that I just listen to on repeat.

 

Claire  33:18

The second question is, do you have music or a book that was really special for you at a specific time in your life? And why?

 

Rhiana  33:25

Yes, I would say This Is Day One, from Drew Dudley. He's now an advisor. I'm completely inspired by him. He is a renowned leadership expert. And he came to speak at my university. And honestly that changed my life. And he's now written a book about it. And so that really changed my life. Because it's exactly this what I was referring to before 'everyday leadership', he teaches that every single person is a leader, you define your values, what are your five core values, which is harder than you think it is? Then create a question per value that you want to answer every day. So, for example, impact, I want to have an impact on what I have done each day that has created impact and it can be as small as making the cashier smile in the supermarket. One of my favourite quotes is "A smile won't change the world, but it can change someone's world" and that if you change someone's world, the ripple effect can change the world. And so really, I incorporate that myself and now in the team as well. And it's amazing. He comes to companies to give a leadership workshop and we're partnering with him so that if a company in Switzerland or anywhere, pays his fee, he donates his fee to us. He comes and gives that workshop kind of for free and you can deduct it from your company's taxes. And honestly I wish every single person would listen to his teachings. It's incredible.

 

Claire  34:59

And my third and last question is do you have any all time favourite songs or books that you would recommend to our listeners?

 

Rhiana  35:08

I'll go with a Human Algorithm to kind of fit into our discussion as well. Human algorithm by Flynn Coleman the importance of bringing human rights into the technological world to ensure an inclusive society. So I'd go with Human Algorithm by Flynn Coleman

 

Claire  35:27

Rhiana, thank you so much. This has been amazing. I am just eager to follow what Spring ACT is doing and where you're going. And you know, I also encourage our listeners to support you wherever they can. So before I let you go, do you have one last thing you'd like to share with us? What was the key takeaway from our conversation?

 

Rhiana  35:47

Just your positive energy honestly, thank you so much for inviting me on this podcast. It's been amazing. I suppose the key takeaway is anyone who's listening, and is suffering from abuse. I want you to know that we're here for you. And we're doing everything we can to bring help to you as soon as we can. To not lose hope, we're here.

 

Claire  36:09

Thank you for the message. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you.

 

Claire  36:24

I have to admit, I am absolutely in awe and blown away by what Spring ACT has accomplished in what they are developing from the world's first chatbot empowering survivors of domestic violence to an alternative Legal Aid app, with the unique goal of empowering individuals in vulnerable situations. If you wish to support Rhiana and her team, head over to her organisation's website at springact.org That is spelled springact.org. You will also find the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I appreciate you taking the time. That was episode number 37, a Conversation with Rhiana Spring. Be sure to leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like our show, remember to tell your friends about it and share within your network. You can also connect with us through our social handles. We are on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook or our website at narratives-of-purpose.podcast page.io Until the next episode, take good care of yourselves, stay well and stay inspired.