The effort was mainly divided into two parts:
Case Management- I was tasked with quickly building a system of refugee-intake to collect the immigration/citizenship status, location, documents and contact - all of which needed to be reviewed by a team of volunteers to verify it and offer guidance to the applicants based on quickly changing political/legal/threat assessments. If we were unable to assist physically, we would do our best to help by providing assistance with special visas and coordinating with the State Department and other NGOs to make referrals.
Operations- Using local contacts we were able to coordinate and pay for transportation and safe-houses for hundreds of Afghanis. Once the airports were shut down we coordinated with people in bordering states to cross by land.
Some the biggest challenges involved
Making forms in multiple dialects with logic dictating subsequent questions and providing resources based on: Quickly evolving U.S. DOS policy Location and availability of known internal and External assets. Able to accommodate groups of people with separate documentation/immigrant status ...While being as simple-as-possible to use and iterate on based on historical inputs