By Eva Borsuk


NEW YORK, March 14 - After going to a peace rally for Ukraine in San Diego, Seattle native Avi Schiffmann did what any 19-year-old would do - he called his friend Marco Burstein, an 18-year-old L.A. native, and the duo created a website, ukrainetakeshelter.com, that matches Ukrainian refugees with international hosts.

The Harvard freshmen didn’t sleep for three days and continue to work on the website every day. Neither Schiffmann nor Burstein have Ukrainian roots, but say it is their humanitarian duty to help those in need.

“The website is a source of inspiration - how many people have come together and offered to help, and more people join every minute,” says Marco, who has been following Ukraine even before the war in his Slavic studies class.

Ukraine Take Shelter launched on March 3 and has already amassed a whopping 10,000 hosts internationally. The site is available in 13 languages, thanks to a team of dedicated translators. “At this point, it’s like a public bulletin,” Schiffmann says.

Burstein and Schiffmann pride their site on being ultra-safe whilst also boasting a minimalistic, user-friendly interface. “It’s built with the thought that humans are awful in mind,” Avi says, explaining that hosts have to state their sex and refugees can choose hosts by selecting certain filters. For example, a woman refugee can choose to stay with a woman-only household. All local police numbers are also listed on the site, and refugees can report and ban hosts.

The website passed extreme cybersecurity tests, and both refugees’ and hosts’ privacy are completely protected. Hosts are verified to be non-bots and are not required to provide their exact address or phone number for the initial listing. Refugees and hosts also don’t have to disclose their real name.

Marco and Avi both got into the Computer Science program at Harvard, having taught themselves coding from YouTube in elementary school. The students don’t think they’ve done anything extraordinary. Avi calls himself an “internet activist,” and says that anyone in the computer age can teach themselves coding and build websites to promote humanitarian causes.

In the future, Marco and Avi want to expand the site to cover other global crises. “The hard part isn’t coding, it’s getting it [the site] in the right hands,” Avi says.

The duo is currently working with Chabad and HIAS to share the resource with more refugees. Marco and Avi have refused all ad offers, keeping the site solely for charitable use. (eb/ez)