Coordinated Response/Diaspora

Contents 1 Coordinated Response/Diaspora 1.1 Summary 1.2 Use Case 1.3 Description 1.4 Existing Solutions and Relevant Links

[edit] Coordinated Response/Diaspora

Blog Post

[edit] Summary

Develop a web tool where members of a diaspora community, governments, and NGOs can “meet up” after a natural disaster and coordinate long-term response efforts. Such a tool would allow for a more grassroots response to disaster relief and will allow individuals who have a stake in the affected communities to leverage and multiply their resources.

[edit] Use Case

One impediment to natural disaster assistance is the often long, resource intensive rebuilding process that takes place after much of the temporary emergency assistance has left. One untapped resource in these long-term efforts is the millions of diaspora members of a given country. These diasporans often reside in resource rich countries, have a good understanding of the country or region of the affected area, and are willing and able to help. However diasporans often have no effective way to communicate or coordinate with each other or with the various government and non-profit entities—and most importantly, no centralized way for knowledgeable members of the diaspora to provide needed skills or financial support to be used in the rebuilding efforts. Using the Haiti Earthquake as an example, there is a large Haitian diaspora in the United States and also in Canada. If there was an online tool that allowed the members of the Haitian diaspora Community to communicate with other diasporans, the governments, and NGOs, they could more effectively mobilize their collective resources to help.

[edit] Description

Create an online tool that can be used by diaspora populations, governments, NGOs, and other interested parties in which individuals or groups can subscribe to in order to receive information on coordinated efforts related to disaster assistance.

• This web tool will provide information to the Diaspora Community on government actions, resources needed, and act as a central nervous system for communications between governments, NGOs, and the Diaspora communities. It could be developed in a number of ways—as a wiki, or similar to a social networking site such as Facebook, but a key component would be a way for members to gain information about disaster response needs in the short-, medium-, and long-term and be able to coordinate resources (human and financial) to help accomplish these goals.
• This web tool would allow concerned diasporans in New York to “meet-up” with a group of concerned diasporans in Los Angeles and then coordinate their skills and resources. These resources (whether human or financial) could be offered in concert with an aid group or government.
• This web tool would also allow for more complex ways of giving. For example, if a group of construction consultants wished to go to Haiti and help but did not have the financial resources, they could “meet up” with others and pull together funds, and then collectively offer their services and financial support to the country’s government or an organization on the ground.
• This web tool would not be limited only to members of a diaspora, but should be developed with this audience in mind.

[edit] Existing Solutions and Relevant Links

There are a number of non-profits who work on short-term disaster relief by collecting funds and organizing volunteers.

• Hands On Disaster Response is an organization that provides short-term disaster assistance with the help of volunteers and financial contributions http://hodr.org/

This Problem Definition was provided in part by the Global Partnerships Initiative at the Department of State