Caroline Bazzi/Jinha AgencyLast fall, Hania Zataari, a mechanical engineer working for Lebanon’s Ministry of Industry, put her skills to use as the country’s war raged. Originally from Sidon, South Lebanon, she created a chatbot on WhatsApp that simplified access to much-needed help.
“They lost their homes, their savings, their jobs, everything they had built,” Hania says, referring to those forced from their homes by the war.
On September 23, Israel dramatically escalated its offensive against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, with which it had been fighting a spiraling conflict since Hezbollah attacked Israel in October 2023.
According to the Lebanese government, at least 492 people were killed in one of the deadliest days of Lebanon’s conflict in almost 20 years.
Thousands of families fled to Sidon after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck what it said were 1,600 Hezbollah strongholds inside Lebanon.
Hania says many displaced people sought shelter in schools and other public buildings, but many others who fled their homes were forced to rent elsewhere or stay with their family members.
It was these people who were not receiving direct support from the government that he wanted to help. Drawing on her programming skills, Hania created the aidbot to bridge the gap between the demand and supply of aid.
Aidbot is a chatbot – a type of AI system designed to communicate with its users online – that connects to WhatsApp. It is programmed to ask simple questions about the types of help people are seeking along with their names and locations.
This information is then entered into a Google spreadsheet, which Hania and her team of unpaid volunteers, made up of friends and family, have access to distribute aid such as food, blankets, mattresses, medicine and clothes.
Hania used her free time to build the bot using the website Callbell.eu, which is commonly used by businesses to engage with customers on Meta’s platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
She explains that the bot, which is still in use today, makes aid delivery more efficient as it reduces the amount of time she spends responding to requests for help via WhatsApp.
“I’m not really interested in knowing their names. I just need to know where they are so I can manage distribution,” she says.
Take, for example, a request for baby formula. Hania says the robot will ask for the baby’s age and the amount needed so she and her team can provide it.
The project, she says, is funded by donations from Lebanese living abroad. She has created a publicly available dashboard to record what projects she has spent money on and how much aid she and her team have distributed.
At the time of writing they have delivered 78 food packages for families of 5 or 10 people, 900 mattresses and 323 blankets across Sidon and other parts of Lebanon.
Last October, 47-year-old Khaldoun Abbas and his family fled their home in Najjarieh after receiving calls from the IDF asking them to leave for their own safety.
Seventeen people, aged between nine and 78, slept under one roof in a three-bed rental flat in Sidon.
Khaldoun says he, his wife and their children, as well as his brother’s family slept on mattresses they retrieved using the aid machine in the hallway of the apartment. They also asked for blankets, food and cleaning detergents.
Unlike his neighbors, he has not been able to return to his home. It was destroyed in a confirmed Israeli attack 11 days later. The IDF told the BBC it “struck a terrorist infrastructure”.
When we put this claim to Khaldoun, he denied having any ties to Hezbollah or any other party.
“This is not the first time that Sidon has opened its doors to displaced people,” Hania explains, referring to the wave of people who have arrived in the city.
Sidon has a long reputation for accepting internally displaced people driven from their homes along the Lebanon-Israel border.
The most recent conflict began in October 2023 after the war between Israel and Hamas spilled over into Lebanon when Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, fired rockets into Israel in support of Gaza.
The Lebanese health ministry says around 4,000 people have been killed and over a million displaced. The ministry does not say how many of them are civilians or combatants.
In Israel, about 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel, and authorities say more than 80 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed.
Last November a ceasefire was agreed between Israel and Lebanon. Despite some struggles, it has been largely supported. But people on the ground say aid delivery has not improved.
The international NGO Islamic Relief told the BBC that “conflict, destruction and evacuation orders have fueled ongoing displacement in Lebanon, which has made it difficult to assess and address the needs of the population amid the changing situation.”
But it is not only the war that is hindering the distribution of aid.
Bilal Merie, a volunteer working with Hania says many of the problems they face are due to the “high demand but short supply” of aid.
He puts it down to the deep economic turmoil that has gripped the country since 2019, meaning the Lebanese government has had to rely heavily on financing from creditors and aid organizations for goods.
But NGOs are also feeling the crisis. Unicef Lebanon says that with only 20% of the funds it needs, it “continues to face a huge funding gap”, meaning the charity is unable to support families when they need it most.
In a country overwhelmed by financial hardship and war, could this helper make a tangible difference?
It’s the first time researcher John Bryant from the Overseas Development Institute has heard of a chatbot being used in such a way in the humanitarian sector.
He says the cultural context in which it is being used is commendable. That is, with knowledge of “the channels people use to talk to each other and meet them in their own language.”
However, he is unsure about its scalability, as what works in Lebanon cannot be easily replicated in other parts of the world.
“What technology offers a lot of the time is a standard cookie-cutter approach.
“It’s native designers, native translators, trusted human interlocutors and elements within that system that elevate digital tools into something useful,” he says.
Aidbot may not be able to provide solutions to all of Lebanon’s problems, but for the families who use it, it has made life a little easier.
Additional reporting by Ahmed Abdallah
