Vaveeva is a new multilingual website that aims to provide a one-stop survival guide and online community for migrants coming to live and work in Ireland, writes Gabrielle Monaghan
Christine Donaghy's social conscience knows no bounds. She was chief executive of the Irish Family Planning Association when the voluntary organisation was receiving death threats and was fined in court for selling condoms in Virgin Megastore. When the furore died down, she helped set up a charity for victims of sexual abuse, called Children at Risk in Ireland (Cari).
Ten years ago, the Belfast native moved into the business world and became a founding director of Conduit, a call centre and directory enquiry business that was sold last year for €90 million. During her time with Conduit, Donaghy set up the company's call centre operations in Spain and was involved in establishing Conduit's pan-European online directory.
Donaghy's latest venture marks her return to social affairs. She is now chief executive of Vaveeva.com, a website she founded that provides a survival guide for migrant workers in Ireland. The site contains information on everything from employment rights, tax and sending money home, to bus and train timetables, local launderettes and libraries.
Vaveeva also acts as a virtual online community for the thousands of people who have arrived on these shores since the EU expansion in 2004, as well as those who are planning to move here to find work.
The company even has a hardship fund for immigrants who can't settle here or who can't find a job and need to return home.
The website's features include a chatroom, blogs, a magazine, web television, photo galleries and news from migrants' native countries. The information is published in eight languages and will be available in a ninth language in two weeks.
Vaveeva is the brainchild of Maxine Brady of Max Films, a maker of commercial films. She was producing a film for employment body Fás aimed at enticing Poles to Ireland when she noticed a dearth of information on living and working here.
Brady linked up with Donaghy, media consultant Ruán Magan, and Bobbie O'Reilly from The Farm post-production company to invest in a company that would cater to the needs of new arrivals to Ireland.
The company could not rely on traditional media to market Vaveeva to the immigrant community as foreign nationals do not usually watch Irish television or listen to local radio, Donaghy says. Instead, the company uses foreign promotion staff to target new arrivals directly.
"At Christmas, we reached every Polish passenger [ coming] in and out of Ireland by plane and bus," Donaghy says. "We gave novelty items to passengers queuing at Warsaw airport, and put flyers on the back of each seat on the Central Wings airline. We showed a DVD on the buses returning from Poland and met each bus so we could hand out promotional items.
"The strategy is to reach different ethnic groups where they work, study and play. We have promotion staff in Cork, Galway and Limerick who go to internet cafes, hostels, colleges, and Polish or Chinese restaurants and supermarkets. We put up notices in staff canteens in hotels and construction sites."
The strategy has paid off. The website, which went online before Christmas, receives some 3,300 visitors a day, or almost 100,000 a month, according to Donaghy. About 18 per cent of site visitors return at least once.
One of them is Aleksandra Spychala Pazdan, a 26-year-old from Opole in Poland who came to Ireland with her husband, Tomasz, in October.
After studying anthropology in Wroclaw, she decided she wanted to work in Ireland for a year to "experience the culture and simply make some money".
"When I came back after Christmas, the Polish community was all up on the new Vaveeva site, networking away," Pazdan says. "It gives me the opportunity to network with different people.
"To be honest, although I'm living in Dublin, it would not have been my first choice. The job opportunities dictated where we lived. Dublin is a bit crowded and dirty for me. My first choice would have been Galway or a small town such as Westport, where it's clean, calm and quiet."
Donaghy warns that some immigrants find it difficult to settle in, especially if they don't have the information provided by Vaveeva. Many immigrants from Poland and China are vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous recruitment companies or employers, who take advantage of some workers' belief that they must pay for their job in Ireland.
"If they are leaving their job in a hotel and tell one of their friends about the job, the person who takes up that job sees nothing wrong in paying for it," Donaghy says. "I remember one case of a young Polish couple arriving in Donegal and the place had never heard of them even though they had paid for the job."
While Vaveeva has a jobs noticeboard, it is in talks with a number of online recruitment sites about a partnership. The website already has partnerships with firms such as Hostel.com and Gumtree.ie which, along with advertising, generate revenue.
Vaveeva also plans to expand to the UK, Germany and Sweden in the autumn.
Donaghy is keen for Government departments and State agencies to come on board and use the website to issue information relevant to migrant workers. "Ten per cent of the population comes from outside Ireland and these are our citizens, so every department and local council needs to communicate with them."
