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Individual worker — self-help on your own phone

Persona. You're a migrant worker — Filipino, Indonesian, Nepali, Bangladeshi, or any other corridor. A recruiter is charging you fees. You have a contract. You don't know if the fees are legal. You don't trust your recruiter. You need information you can verify, on your phone, without anyone else seeing what you ask.

What this gives you. A free Android app you can install on any modern phone. Everything stays on your phone. No account, no email, no telemetry. Built for migrants by people who have spent years studying recruitment-fee fraud and forced labor.

What it is NOT. It's not a lawyer. It can't fight your case in court. It cannot replace your country's labor regulator or your destination country's NGO. What it can do is help you look up the law fast, document evidence, and produce a packet you can hand to a lawyer or NGO.

Plain-language explanation

The app does five things:

  1. Chat — ask any question about your contract, fees, recruiter, employer. It cites the actual law that applies to your country and corridor.
  2. Journal — keep a private record of every meeting, fee paid, message from your recruiter, photo of your contract. Encrypted on your phone.
  3. Reports — see which laws may have been broken in your case, what the legal fee caps are for your corridor, and which NGOs help workers in your destination country.
  4. Refund claims — if a fee you paid was illegal, the app drafts the cover letter for a refund claim, with the right statute, the right regulator, and the right contact info.
  5. Panic wipe — one tap erases everything. For when you need the phone to look clean.

Everything happens on your phone. Nothing is sent to any company, including the people who built the app, unless you choose to share a report yourself.

Install

  1. On your Android phone, open the browser.
  2. Go to: https://github.com/TaylorAmarelTech/duecare-journey-android/releases
  3. Tap the latest duecare-journey-v0.9.0-twenty-corridors-new-rules.apk.
  4. Allow "Install unknown apps" if prompted (it's needed because the app is not in the Play Store yet — that's deliberate, the Play Store would require a Google account; we don't want you to need one).
  5. Open the app.

The first time you open it, it asks two questions: - Where are you in your journey? (Pre-departure, in transit, arrived, employed, exit) - Which corridor? (e.g., Philippines → Hong Kong)

That's the only setup. There's no account creation. There's no email field. The app never asks who you are.

Use it on day 1 — quick guided intake

Open the Journal tab. You'll see a button at the top: Quick guided intake. Tap it.

The app walks you through 10 questions:

  1. Who is your recruiter? (Name, agency, who introduced you)
  2. Do they have a license? (POEA / BMET / BP2MI / DoFE number)
  3. What fees have you paid? (Amount, currency, what they called it)
  4. Did you take a loan? (Amount, interest rate, who lent it)
  5. Did you sign a contract? (Yes/no, what language)
  6. What wage was promised?
  7. Where is your passport now?
  8. Do you know your employer? (Name, address)
  9. Are you free to call your family? (Phone, frequency)
  10. Has anyone threatened you? (Recruiter, sub-agent, employer)

Skip any question you don't know the answer to. Each answer becomes a journal entry, automatically tagged with the patterns it matches.

When you finish, tap Reports.

What the Reports tab shows you

  • Case overview — how many entries, how many fee lines, how many risk flags
  • ILO indicators — which of the 11 international forced-labor indicators apply to your case (passport withholding, debt bondage, threats, etc.)
  • Detailed findings — for each pattern that fired, what statute it relates to and what your next step should be
  • Fee table — every fee tracked, with a flag if the fee is illegal under your corridor's law
  • Refund claims — for each illegal fee, a "Start refund claim" button that drafts the paperwork

Tap Generate intake document. The app makes a single document combining all of the above — formatted as something you can show to a lawyer, NGO, or government regulator.

What to share, with whom, when

You want to... What to share With whom
Check if your recruiter is licensed Just the license number The official regulator (POEA: dmw.gov.ph, BMET: bmet.gov.bd, BP2MI: bp2mi.go.id)
Know if a fee is illegal Generated intake document NGO that handles your corridor (the app shows you which)
File a refund claim Drafted refund-claim cover letter Origin-country labor regulator
Get legal help Generated intake document Legal aid clinic in your destination country
Stay safe Don't share anything yet — keep building your record n/a
Are in active danger Hotline number for your destination country The app shows the right hotline based on your corridor

The app never auto-sends anything. Every share is your decision.

Privacy — what to expect

  • Nothing leaves your phone unless you tap Share. The app doesn't send analytics. It doesn't send crash reports. The only outbound network call by default is the one-time download of the AI model.
  • Your journal is encrypted on your phone. Even if someone gets your phone unlocked, they need your phone's secure storage key to read your journal. The encryption is the same kind banks use.
  • Panic wipe erases everything in one tap. Settings → Danger zone → Erase everything. Cannot be recovered.
  • You can use a fake email everywhere. The app doesn't need one. If you want to share a report, share it via WhatsApp / Signal / SMS / print — your choice.

What to NEVER type into the app

Even though everything stays on your phone:

  • Real names — use "Auntie L." instead of the recruiter's full name. Keep the real name written down somewhere offline.
  • Passport numbers — note "passport from " instead.
  • Bank account numbers — note "via bank transfer" instead.
  • Specific addresses — note "Causeway Bay area" instead of the building name.

Why: if you ever lose your phone, or someone forces you to unlock it, those details are sensitive. The app's analysis works fine without them.

What the app cannot do

  • Cannot get you out of a country. If you're in a kafala-style situation in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf, the app shows you the embassy contact and the local NGO. The actual paperwork happens with them.
  • Cannot represent you in court. If you have a legal case, the generated report helps a lawyer get up to speed faster, but a lawyer still has to file the case.
  • Cannot guarantee its answers are correct. AI makes mistakes. Always check the cited law against the official source before acting. The app shows you the source for everything it says.
  • Cannot work without internet for the FIRST install. The one-time model download (~1.5 GB) needs Wi-Fi. After that, the app works fully offline.
  • Cannot replace common sense. If something feels wrong, trust your instincts. Talk to someone you trust before paying any fee.

Languages

The chat surface accepts any language Gemma 4 understands, which includes the major migrant-corridor languages: English, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Nepali, Bangla, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Sinhala, Arabic, Vietnamese, Khmer, Thai, Burmese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese.

The app's interface is partially localized in v0.9.0 (English, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia, Nepali, and Arabic are documented in the mobile architecture notes; Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, Vietnamese, Sinhala, and Tamil remain roadmap). You can chat in your own language even when some buttons stay in English.

What to do if the recruiter sees the app on your phone

The app's icon is "Duecare Journey" with a generic blue book. It does not say "anti-trafficking" anywhere on the home screen. You can move it into a folder with other apps to make it less prominent.

If pressured to delete it: Settings → Panic wipe. The recruiter can watch you do this; the app erases instantly. Re-install later when safe.

If your phone is taken from you: the journal is encrypted; nothing in your panic-wiped state reveals it was ever installed. The recruiter sees a phone with no Duecare app.

What it costs

$0. Forever. The app is open source. The team that built it is not selling anything.

(There's a one-time data cost for the model download — about ₱350 on Globe prepaid, free on Wi-Fi. The app warns you about this before downloading.)

When you'd benefit from talking to someone instead

  • You're in active physical danger — call 911 / 999 (most countries) or the destination country's emergency number.
  • Your wages are months overdue — your destination country's labour ministry has a tribunal that hears wage claims regardless of immigration status. The app shows you the contact.
  • A family member is being held in another country — an international NGO (Polaris Project, IJM, Anti-Slavery International) handles this. The app links to them by corridor.

The app is for building your record + finding the right person to talk to. It's not a replacement for that person.

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