Currently taking some time off after a year of studies at Harvard University, 19-year-old Schiffmann was attending a rally in support of Ukraine in San Diego when he decided he had the skills to contribute more effectively. 

He hasn’t been impressed by the sites run by refugee aid organisations or government entities.

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“We’ve been all watching this for a while. I really didn’t think it was going to escalate this far,” Schiffmann told GeekWire by phone. “I had absolutely no plans to make a website for this.”

?? Today @marcowaves and I are launching https://t.co/ZfCfGUm1NP ????, an independent platform connecting Ukrainian refugees with potential hosts in neighboring countries.

This site is a public bulletin — we encourage everyone with space to post and share their listing.

— Avi Schiffmann ???? (@AviSchiffmann) March 2, 2022

On Feb. 27 he tweeted his idea to build a site to match Ukrainian refugees with hosts in neighbouring countries. He got out of bed that night and started working on it and within 24 hours he tweeted again that it was 90% built. Schiffmann enlisted the help of his friend Marco Burstein, a web developer at Harvard.

“We literally worked for three days straight,” Schiffmann said. “There was nothing else I was doing except for working on the website.”

Geek wire