How Technology Could Revolutionize Refugee Resettlement

PITTSBURGH—Half a world away from the refugee camp in Uganda where he lived for a dozen years, Baudjo Njabu tells me about his first winter in the United States.

“The biggest challenge is the cold,” he said in Swahili, speaking through an interpreter. We’re sitting on dining chairs in his sparsely furnished living room. Outside, snow covers the grass on the other side of the glass patio doors that lead to the back of the townhouse he is renting in western Pittsburgh. Njabu recounts how his children missed school recently because the bus was delayed and they couldn’t bear the frigid temperatures. His daughter and two sons sit with their mother on a leather couch nearby, half-listening to his replies, distracted by their cellphones and an old Western playing on the television.

All of this has been a major adjustment. Since arriving here in November, Njabu, who is 58 but looks far younger, says he has felt welcomed: Aid workers have helped him rent a place to live, figure out his utility bills, and navigate public transit. His neighbors, fellow refugees among them, are friendly. His children are in school, and he and his wife found jobs in a food-processing facility and