Aselo®: Helping the World’s Children

Helplines are on the frontlines of responding to people in crisis. People in need, need the right help quickly. Right now, almost every helpline has “rolled their own” technology solutions. Because very few helplines support social media communications platforms, there is a huge and widening gap of millions of people, especially children and youth, who still struggle to make contact with helpline services.

To address the challenges, Tech Matters has built Aselo, a modern, open source contact center platform that unifies the communications work of crisis response helplines, based on Twilio’s Flex technology. Aselo allows callers and texters to reach out to helplines using their preferred communications channel rather than just traditional toll-free helpline numbers. People, and especially children, will have far more access points to reach the help they need including voice, webchat, SMS, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook Messenger. Counselors will benefit from an integrated system and tools designed to increase efficiencies and eliminate duplicate data entry. Ten national child helplines participated in co-development of the Aselo platform, which means we built in the features helplines need most, such as user management, security (including multi-factor authentication), databases (including case management), and reporting and dashboard services. Aselo is now in active use by helplines in South Africa, Zambia, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Brazil. We are already working with other helplines in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and North America to customize Aselo for their use.

If you are operating a crisis response helpline and would like to understand how the Aselo platform can help you serve the people you support better, please reach out for a live demonstration of our product to see it in action and find out about the services we offer to helplines. The Aselo.org website has more information, including a six-minute demonstration video showing the highlights of Aselo.