Supporting Ukraine Through the "Tech to The Rescue" Project: UA SOS App

Introduction

Due to the fact that more and more Ukrainians are fleeing war in their homeland, a lot of companies, from big enterprises to small businesses, decided to help them in this critical situation. And so did Callstack.

As a tech company we decided to join the Tech To The Rescue Team and their TechForUkraine project to do what we do best - help in developing the UA SOS app - an application that helps refugees find a safe shelter in Poland.

In this article, you’ll read about the UA SOS project itself, what this app is all about and how the Callstack team helped to deliver this charity project in an extremely short time. 

What is UA SOS?

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The UA SOS is an app that has been designed and developed to help refugees from Ukraine to find automatically free accommodation offered by private individuals and institutions willing to help.

The app works on a simple scheme - if you want to propose a shelter for refugees, just create an account (you can log in with Facebook or Google) and register any type of accommodation you can offer for free.

Whereas you are looking for help, all you need to do is to create a free account by logging in on the uasos website (you can do it with Facebook or Google). Then, click on the “I’m looking for a shelter” button and fulfill a short questionnaire. Now you are registered and can seek shelter among the registered, verified accounts.

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Callstack's commitment

To be 100% clear, the project set up by the Tech To The Rescue team gathered specialists from many tech companies in Poland including, for example, BCG, IDAdvisory, Netguru, Boldare, and many more. 

Callstack delegated a team of 18 people - 14 software developers and four Project Managers who voluntarily helped in building UA SOS app taking part in works on:

• landing page, 
• register form for shelter providers, 
• translating the page to different languages (Polish, English, Ukrainian, and Russian),
• and bug fixing.

Although the first phase of the project is done and the app is working, Callstack is still in touch with the Tech To The Rescue team and, if there will be a need, is still eager to help. 

Summary

In business terms, we can say that the UA SOS app had extremely short time-to-market. This project required from all of the participants great flexibility, project awareness and very high skills having in mind the extremely fast-paced development environment.

It only proves how talented and big-hearted polish (but not only!) developers and project managers are, and shows that there are no limitations for these people, even if they have to work till 5 am in the very first day. 

We are very proud of every single person involved in this project. You’ve challenged reality, and came away unscathed from this, let’s say “battle”. A battle with short deadlines, a fast-paced environment, a lot of unknowns, and a lack of sleep.

Our beloved software developers:

Aleksandra Desmurs Linczewska,  Michał Pierzchała, Michał Chudziak, Michał Parkitny, Jakub Kłobus, Tomasz Krzyżowski, Krystian Kościelniak, Mateusz Wit, Karol Latusek, Rafał Zakrzewski, Adam Trzcinski, Marcin Grzywaczewski, Małgorzata Mazurek-Biel

Project managers:

Natalia Gros, Arkadiusz Biczysko, Katarzyna Łazarska, Monika Szczygieł, Alicja Bijak, and everyone involved in the #TechForUkraine project. Your attitude is a demonstration of the power of unity and humanity which is invaluable in the current situation. 

Thank you!