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Earthquake in Haiti: How You can Help and Learn More

Relief efforts are ongoing after a powerful 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti yesterday. Mobile phones play a huge part in relief efforts today, from supporting donations, citizen media coming from affected areas, to emergency relief coordination. Here are some links and information you might find useful in responding to and learning more about the Haiti earthquakes.  

Mobile Donations

[This section last updated 01/15/2010 12:59 pm]

Text message donations are exploding in the aftermath of the earthquake, similar to what happened in 2004 after the Indonesian Tsunami. $9 million has already been donated by noon on Friday January 15 just to the Red Cross via the 90999 number.

A list of all short codes to text to to donate on your phone bill in the United States:

• Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross for Haiti efforts. You can donate $10 up to three times, and 100% of the donations will reach the Red Cross Foundation. This effort is run by Mobile Accord.
• Text YELE to 501501 to donate $5 to the Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation. 501501 is run by Give On the Go, a service provider for the Mobile Giving Foundation. Ashley Nay, who is in Business Development at Give On the Go told MobileActive on the phone that "100% of the donations go to YELE" from these donations.
• Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee.
• Text RELIEF to 30644 to get automatically connected to Catholic Relief Services and donate money with your credit card.
• Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation.
• Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International. 
• Text HAITI to 85944 to donate $5 to the Rescue Union Mission and MedCorp International.

A list of all the non-US short codes that we know are serving as donation lines.

• Germany: text HAITI to 81190 to donate $5 (out of which $4.83 will go to Aktion Deutschland Hilft).
• Denmark: text Katastrofe to 1231 to donate 150 kr, or call 90 56 56 56. 
• Canada: text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army, again courtesy of the Mobile Giving Foundation.
• Italy: text to 48540 to donate to the Italian Red Cross if you are on the WIND or 3 networks. If you are on Vodacom or TIM, text 48451 to donate EUR 2 (Telecom Italia users can also call this number). (Read More)
• France: 80 222/Croix Rouge française, 80 333/Secours Populaire, et 80 444/Secours Catholique. One euro per SMS. (From a user)
• Mexico: Telcel users can text 8888, donations will go to the Carlos Slim Foundation (Thanks @sorrelkydd)

More organizations that are working in Haiti in relief efforts are listed on  The NYTimes Lede Blog and more on MSNBC's How to Help page.

Ongoing Communications Efforts

[Update, as of 01/15/2010, ~1:30pm]

• A good source for ongoing communication information is the Ushahidi Situation Room. We reported about the Ushahidi map for Haiti (Ushahidi is a mapping platform for crowdsourced crisis information) earlier, and it is being actively updated by the situation room setup at Tufts' Fletcher School. The Ushahidi blog also lists many of the other map-based information collection systems that have been set up.
• This morning, Erik Hersman posted a mobile network update (01/15/2010, 10:03am) on the Situation Room page saying "Digicel is at 50% Voila & Haitel at 75%." USA Today reported yesterday that Jamaica-based Digicel has had problems getting themselves into Haiti, and that "the network is severely congested 'because of the number of people making calls and trying to receive calls.'"
• A story on MSNBC from yesterday details some of TSF's work in Haiti. From the article:

Telecoms Sans Frontieres is hooking up terminals to facilitate communications for U.N. relief workers in Haiti, and will eventually let Haitians make free two-minute phone calls to anywhere in the world. The group's U.S. representative, Paul Margie, said the biggest challenge isn't technology but security. "The security and logistics situation on the ground is pretty bad, so finding secure locations to do these things is hard," he told me.

• The Swedish Wire reports that Ericsson is working on deploying "container-based mini-GSM system" to improve communications.

[Following was the section as it was posted the day after the earthquake, 01/13/2010, ~1:00pm]

• We are hearing that Digicel, one of the main mobile operators, is intermittently working as of right now, and satellite telephone services has allowed many first-responders and witnesses to report via skype on the devastation in Haiti. Digicel has also committed $5 million for relief efforts. [WSJ]
• Telecoms Sans Frontiers is deploying a team for support with emergency telecoms.  You can donate to their efforts at this page. From the article:

Port-au-Prince has been severely affected including critical services such as, electricity, water and phone lines. Communication appears to be almost impossible at this time, with phone lines down. Numerous buildings, including the United Nations building, are reported to have been seriously damaged.

Facing this humanitarian catastrophe, TSF has deployed an emergency team from the American base in Managua to provide a vital support in emergency telecoms. They are carrying satellite mobile and fixed telecommunications tools. Reinforcements will also be sent from TSF’s international Headquarters. In close contact with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO), they are now flying to Saint-Domingue in order to rejoin Port-au-Prince as soon as possible.

At this stage there is very limited access because of debris and other obstacles on the roads. It seems that no communication can be made with the airport either, which is reported to be closed.

• The Crisis Commons wiki is documenting some of the News, Data, and Communications efforts. In particular, they report about two mobile communication service efforts (they seek confirmation whether these are working yet): 
  • Ushahidi - SMS:+44 7624802524 or email haiti@ushahidi.com
  • InSTEDD GeoChat +447624805700 set up for local providers (SMS Reference)

Information from the Ground  

Twitter Lists   

Twitter lists have become a quick-fire way to organize and aggregate  information related to events and topics. Quite a few twitter lists have  been set up by several news organizations after the Haiti  earthquake. Here is a sample:  

• CNN list
• NYTimes list
• BBC list
• NPR list

The twitter hashtag #haiti and a  search for haiti on twitter yield lots of info.   

US State Department/American Citizens  

Barack Obama in speech to Americans this morning listed  several ways in which the US government is trying to help relief  efforts in Haiti:  

• Americans seeking info on family in Haiti should call  1-800-407-4747  
• Updates from the White House's efforts will be put on  The White House Blog. From the Department of State, updates are coming on the official twitter-verified DipNote.
• DipNote also says: Americans in Haiti can call the Embassy’s Consular Task Force at 509-2229-8942, 509-2229-8089, 509-2229-8322, or 509-2229-8672.   

Live Blogs / Other semi-live coverage  

Many blogs are covering the happenings live, and incorporating photos  and videos coming in from citizen reporters in Haiti:

• Reuters has a page offering live coverage of events. Includes picture reports coming in through twitter, as well as News from other sources.
• CNN iReport, a citizen journalism effort, is aggregating citizen-submitted videos and photos on this page.
• The Lede Blog at the New York Times has ongoing coverage.
• NPR also has ongoing coverage on its Two Way blog.
• The Guardian also has liveblogging efforts.

(More here). Compiling citizen voices in Haiti are on this Global Voices Online page, to be updated as more content comes in.

YouTube

Youtube's search on earthquake Haiti yields many videos, and there are some dedicated channels and playlists on the cause like this one from CitizenTube.

References for Relief efforts

We have also compiled some references for those interested in reading more about previous relief efforts and resources that might help organizations running relief efforts:

• Reuters EIS is Emergency Information Services being developed by the Reuters Thompson Foundation in partnership with INSTEDD and UNICEF.  INSTEDD has staffers deployed in Haiti to determined whether EIS might be useful there.

• The United Nations Foundations and the Vodafone Foundation recently released a report on New Technologies in Emergencies and Conficts

• Cell Broadcast is the technology that was designed for use in emergencies such as this. A report evaluating cell broadcast's usage possibilities in disaster situations in Maldives is available in our mDirectory.

Extending the Technology-Community-Management Model to Disaster Recovery: Assessing Vulnerability in Rural Asia

Mobile Minute - Daily m4Change News

Today's Mobile Minute covers the mobile gender gap, mobiles in the classroom that allow deaf children to learn alongside hearing children, a study about mobile over-sharing, mobile credits on cell phones during disasters, post-Haiti disaster management with ICTs, and a 90-second interview with Patricia Mechael about mobile health. 

• In developing countries, there is a 300 million-person gap between male and female phone ownership.  "A New ICT4D Paradigm: Women + Mobile Phones + mServices = Economic Development" examines the findings of Women and Mobile: A Global Opportunity and covers how women using mServices (mHealth, mPayments, mEmployment, mAgriculture) could lead to greater opportunities and economic development in developing countries. 

• The Child Africa International School in Kabale, Uganda encourages the use of SMS at school in order to foster communication between hearing and non-hearing students, as described in "Deaf Children are Being Heard in Africa." (Hat tip Textually.org)

• According to a Webroot Study of 1,645 social network users, 55% of people polled said "they worry over loss of privacy incurred from using geolocation data" on mobile phones."

• The Wall Street Journal writes about Concern Worldwide, an NGO, that is testing a mobile credit system in Niger for cash aid: "Looking to Cellphones to Deliver Aid in Africa." We wrote about the scheme a while back.

• "Disaster Response 2.0: Learning from Haiti" looks at how ICTs were used after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, covering mobile donations, Ushahidi, and how ICTs can help during emergencies. 

• In a short, 90-second audio piece on Earth Sky, Patricia Mechael talks about mobile health, her work with ChildCount+, and the promise of mhealth.
  

[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]

Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei

ICT for Disaster Management

Sahana Mobile Application on the Openmoko platform

I am currently working on developing a client application for Sahana, which can also act as a standalone data collecting tool for field reporters and people working in the process of disaster relief & management.

What is Sahana?

"...Free and Open Source Disaster Management system. It is a web based collaboration tool that addresses the common coordination problems during a disaster from finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers, tracking camps effectively between Government groups, the civil society (NGOs) and the victims themselves." - Source - http://www.sahana.lk

What is Openmoko™?

1.    Openmoko is a Linux distribution designed for open mobile computing platforms, such as, but not limited to, cellphones.
2.    Openmoko is the company behind the Openmoko Linux distribution. Openmoko also manufactures mobile computing platforms, such as the Neo FreeRunner.”

Mobile Phones and the Flood in Bihar, India

One India reports on how mobile phones are used after the devastating floods in Bihar, India. While relief and aid have been very slow to get to Bihar, mobiles are proving to be a life saver.  According to One India,

[Mobiles] are playing the most crucial role in largescale evacuation and rescue of marooned people from far flung areas. The availability of mobile phones to all sections of people across the flooded regions and their 24 hour connectivity during the crisis period, greatly helped the rescue teams to locate the cut off villages and localities besides saving many lives even from remote areas.

Through cell phones the marnooed people were also able to remain connected with the district officials to guide them about their need and the urgency of rescuing them.

In absence of any other mode of communication, particularly the land line telephones, as most of which went under six to eight feet of water in the worst affected districts of Madhepura, Supoul, Araria and Sitamarhi, it was the connectivity of mobile phone network that had kept the hopes of lakhs of people alive.