Antidiscrimination Association Germany (ADVD): Advice center management and chatbot

The Anti-Discrimination Association Germany (ADVD - antidiskriminierung.org) acts as an umbrella organization representing independent anti-discrimination offices and counselling centres for persons who have experienced discrimination. The association currently comprises 33 member organizations across 13 German federal states.

We are developing a chatbot for the ADVD. The chatbot is intended to provide initial orientation for people who experience discrimination and to simplify access to counselling. The chatbot is meant to realize multiple goals:

Inform people about their rights

Through dialogue with the chatbot, users will be informed about their rights. Similar to a personal consultation, relevant questions are asked, which help in making an initial assessment.

Report discrimination

Via the chatbot, users can report a case of discrimination, which will then also be recorded statistically in the corresponding registers. For the user, this gives the possibility to emotionally process the event as well as to contribute to making discrimination visible.

Find counseling centers

Another function is to help users find a counseling center that is suitable for their case and is situated in their area of residence. For this purpose, the chatbot uses an API to access the web-based application we have developed to manage the counseling centers.

Technology

Besides the chatbot, which is built on an open-source platform, the layer for coordination between counseling center is a bespoke application developed by Neighbourhoodie using AdonisJS, our preferred JavaScript framework, Bulma for the UI aspects, and PostgreSQL for the database layer.