Most of us in El Salvador have a close friend, relative or acquaintance who took the risk to go to the United States.

The Wet Zone is an App with a main purpose: "To Save Lives". This project was born in El Salvador, a country with high rates of migration due to different problems like economy, politics, among others. However many of the migrants who take the risk to achieve the “American Dream” in order to improve their lives or help their relatives, suffer a lot of rights violations for example kidnapping, raping, stealing, and in the worst case their own death.

For those reasons, we started to create this powerful App that works 100% offline, to provide a simple tool to help the migrant (for those who travel by land). This App is not looking to encourage illegal migration but to keep the migrant alive. How? The Team has developed a Mobile App, originally for Windows Phone 8 Devices that supply some basic but useful options. For example:

1)   I'm here! This option provides your specific location and what is near you for example hostels or dangerous zones. If the migrant has an internet connection, he or she will be able to share the location via e-mail with his or her contacts.

2)      Map. It is one of the most important options because it provides all the information about dangerous points, embassies, hostels, water sources, among others. The information comes from different sources such as censuses of the United Nations, universities, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador, UNDP and others (all the maps needed must be downloaded before the beginning of the trip).

3)      Profile, with this option the migrant is going to be able to create basic profile with his or her information, for example name, nationality, contacts, allergies, among others. The main purpose of these data is to help the migration team if the migrant asks for help or is found in a complex situation.

4)      SOS button or panic button, it’s a very innovative option, that provides the migrant an alternative to send a SMS to the migration office, police or rescue teams in order to ask them for help if they are suffering any kind of trouble during their travel. The SMS will provide a Map with their approximate location. In the future we want to expand the option to share the message to social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

5)      Compass, if the migrant didn’t download the maps or the migrant is planning to use a paper map, this option could save his or her life.

6)      Survival Tips, these are some basic ideas of what the migrant can do during his or her trip.