Answers around the clock, in writing or by voice
Even after offices close, the need for information remains. Certain questions come up repeatedly (distribution schedules and dates, available services, etc.). When this information isn’t available at the right time, it leads to repeated calls and increased pressure on staff. The SOLIS Bot information center ensures service continuity by automatically responding to these common inquiries. Available at all times, it makes it easier for affected communities to access information while allowing your teams to focus on situations that require human assistance.
How it works
The principle is simple. An affected person sends a WhatsApp message to your number and navigates by numbers through a tree of options your teams have built. For affected communties in general, this requires no additional application, no account, and no fees. Based on lessons learned from previous deployments of the SOLIS Bot, we recommaend no more than six options per menu, and only information that is immediately useful.
Here is what a crisis menu looks like, deployed in Lebanon in 2026:
Welcome to the SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL information center. Reply with the number that matches your need. [1] Where to find temporary shelter [2] How to receive emergency food aid [3] How to register with SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL [4] Speak directly to the team
Each option can lead to a sub-menu, a contact, a document, or a voice note. You build the tree from a simple web interface, and you change it in a few clicks as the situation evolves.
Designed to be understood by everyone
An information center is only worth as much as its reach to the people conventional channels leave out. So every section exists as text and as a voice note, in the languages your communities speak. In Haiti, the Haitian creole recordings are made by Haitian members of the team, not by a studio voice: a familiar voice, in the accent of the region, is a voice people listen to all the way through. It is a detail that markedly lifts the consultation rate.
Another decisive advantage in low-connectivity settings: PDF documents attached in the bot, illustrated guides or evacuation maps, stay on the beneficiary's phone even without a network. A map consulted offline, on the day coverage drops, can make all the difference.
In practice, three very different contexts
In an emergency. In Lebanon, in March 2026, at the height of the displacement, our teams opened a crisis information center in under 24 hours, to point tens of thousands of people towards shelters and available aid.
In prevention. In Cameroon, the same tool runs a "flood preparedness" center, switched on six weeks before the rainy season, with a checklist, evacuation routes and emergency contacts in 3 languages.
Where access is cut off. In Haiti, in areas teams cannot reach, the information center is sometimes the only active channel, with a deliberately neutral first message so as not to expose the person receiving it.
What it changes
More than 382,000 information messages have been shared to date across all deployments. At CARE Lebanon, 97% of conversations are started spontaneously by the people invovled, with no broadcast prompting them: this is the best signal that a channel is genuinely useful, and that people come back to it on their own.
Making it last
Three habits separate a living information center from a forgotten one:
- Have the voice notes recorded by your local teams, not by headquarters. The accent and the turns of phrase matter as much as the content.
- Spread your number through the community's trusted channels: local leaders, neighbourhood committees, health workers. One peer recommendation will build trust.
- Plan a quarterly content review. Contacts change, facilities close. A center that is never updated loses its users within months. In a crisis, keeping information up to date is a form of accountability.