New software development initiative with social impact in the context of Covid 19. The Pyxis chatBot connects people seeking help with institutions that provide assistance.

Covid 19 impacts society in multiple ways. Fears increase, loneliness appears, domestic violence cases increase as a result of social isolation, among many other impacts. There are many families who suffer the loss of employment or the disease itself. “Being listened to can make the difference for a person going through loneliness, fears or anxiety, among other emotions difficult to manage at this time,” says Diego Sastre, CEO of Pyxis and counselor graduated from Edhuca (School of Human Development Casa Grande).

Active listening” was the starting point of Enlace Solidario. The project was born from Channel 4’s need to respond to the enormous volume of messages it began to receive through TU VOZ EN TELENOCHE, a Whatsapp service (095 061 761) that became available in the middle of the pandemic.

By putting the service on the air to respond to viewers’ queries and needs, over the course of the two-hour newscast they received more than 2,500 messages of all kinds. “From the nice and hopeful videos that we broadcast on our screen, to queries about access to baskets, difficulties in collecting family allowances, labor problems, etc. For 24 hours Telenoche tried to answer them all. But the messages accumulated and exceeded our attention capacity», explains Gonzalo Terra, Telenoche’s manager.

The next day, Sebastián García, director of the Pyxis ecosystem and co-founder of IDATHA, visited Channel 4 to participate in an interview on teleworking. Sebastián asked Gonzalo if he would not let him see the phone to see if he could help him in any way. “I come across an unmanageable amount of conversations of people going hungry, depressed, out of work and not knowing what to do. Gonzalo tells me that he was taking the phone home so he could answer messages. It was a really unmanageable situation because there were thousands of messages,” Sebastián recalls. And he adds that “immediately” he began to think of ideas to “organize, channel and systematize all that”.

From that moment on, within the framework of the Pyxis Social Responsibility program to promote technological initiatives with a social impact, Pyxis offered to work together with Telenoche to generate a development that would make it possible to respond to all these messages. This is how “Enlace Solidario” was born.

The technological initiative of social impact, developed by teams from Pyxis, Idatha and members of the company’s Social Responsibility, works as a link between people who need help and the institutions that provide assistance, in a first stage with special emphasis on psychological counseling.

Specifically, it is a chatBot that receives WhatsApp messages, processes them through artificial intelligence to determine the type of help and connects each person with the most appropriate service for their need.

From this arises the alliance with Telenoche 4: the channel promotes the service and, in turn, uses the tool in its WhatsApp line. In this way, Canal 4 channels the 1,000 messages it receives daily with requests for help of various kinds.

In the first stage, Enlace Solidario focuses especially on facilitating psychological support through the free counseling provided by the Uruguayan Association of Counselors in conjunction with EDHUCA (Casa Grande School of Human Development). These institutions are in charge of listening to the needs of each person and providing psychological assistance during the health emergency.

“The service vocation of these organizations and the fact that the counselors offered on an honorary basis to assist people in need was key to provide a high value service, while generating a synergy between technology and totally innovative psychological assistance” explains Diego.

“There is no profit or other gain, only, and we are more than satisfied, the gratification of crossing the path of those in need and those who are willing to give,” adds Gonzalo from Channel 4.

In the first stage, a virtual psychological consulting service is offered, introducing the concept that even if you stay at home, you are not alone. This is a service that has no cost to the end user and to which they can subscribe voluntarily.

“The project creates a tool to increase the capacity to listen to messages from thousands of people in a way that would not be possible to achieve manually, being able to attend and respond to all messages received,” says Diego.

In fact, less than a week after it went into production, Enlace Solidario channeled 12,000 messages and responded to 3,500 users. Edhuca is providing more than 55 consultations. “I feel satisfaction and above all the need to continue generating new ideas to be able to respond more quickly and provide even more support,” says Sebastián when it comes to making a first assessment.

Enlace Solidario has a technology that could be extended to send information to the population, generating a link between society and other actors that provide support (government, NGOs, etc.).

That is why, in a second stage, Enlace Solidario will expand the network to more organizations that offer help services, both psychological and other. It is a project open to all those who want to join and give free support, both public and private institutions.

The project is developed by Pyxis and its ecosystem of technology companies, where Idatha stands out. Through its product Kybalion, they have promoted the development of the chatBot platform. Pyxis, an Uruguayan technology company founded in 2009, today has 10 business units, offices in 6 countries of the continent and more than 300 employees.