Listing and Certification of Local Resources and Service Providers

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From Random Hacks of Kindness

1 Summary
2 Goals
3 Needs Description
4 Challenges
5 Who Needs It
6 Complementary Processes
7 Additional Information
8 Current State and Solutions
9 Similar and Relevant Projects
10 Project Coordinators

[edit] Summary

An information system to facilitate the identification of existing local capacity, capacity building and strengthening needs and existing and potential local service providers which can be part of and engaged in assistance initiatives, allowing local talent to be acknowledged, strengthened, certified and used by assistance organizations, beyond the assistance intervention process.

[edit] Goals

To eliminate exclusion of local stakeholders in assistance processes and interventions.
To create an information and support system that facilitates the identification, matching, rating, certification and contracting of local stakeholders.
To achieve participation and representation of survivors in all relief and recovery actions and interventions, with a significant portion of assistance budgets spent locally, activating the local economy and recovery processes.
To change the mindset of assistance organizations and their perception of assistance recipients (including disaster survivors) from helpless, passive homogeneous groups of people needing help to able and capable stakeholders which can be actively engaged in the assistance processes.

[edit] Needs Description

"Time and time again, disaster survivors are considered, perceived, approached and treated as helpless victims, faceless, nameless masses of people to be saved by those helping in a complex puzzle of incompatible pieces of all sizes and colors.

Often, relief efforts are tautological and centered on the fulfillment of their own plans and strategies and on achieving what they consider is best for disaster survivors.

(...)

Survivors swiftly and organically organize themselves as communities and social ensembles, although all an outsider sees is an endless homogeneous mass of people needing help. They immediately start to tend and care for each other. Beyond the immediate and urgent rescue operations of survivors in critical condition and life-threatening situations, more often than not, disaster survivors, do not need to be saved, what they need is to be recognized as articulate and able stakeholders, responsible and part of their recovery and the reconstruction of their natural, social and economic environment. They do not need help, they need to be enabled, engaged, empowered and connected.

But we fail to do so, we fail to recognize them as such, we fail to include them, we fail to "save" them by declaring ourselves as their saviors and guardians of their best interests, choices, options, decisions and future paths. Exclusion is the word that best describes a large number of disaster relief and, particularly, recovery initiatives. (...) Having witnessed these conscious and unconscious exclusion behaviors and having experienced the inefficiencies of disaster relief, where billions of dollars in donations are sent by people from all over the world, and billions are wasted in creating comfortable conditions, redundant structures and unnecessary import of human force for field operations that ignore existing infrastructures and obliterate local capacity, it becomes clear that ..." we need to change the mindset of assistance organizations and their perception of assistance recipients (including disaster survivors) from helpless, passive homogeneous groups of people needing help to able and capable stakeholders which can be actively engaged in the assistance processes.

(After disaster strikes,) "the local economy has to be reactivated. Local stakeholders should be included and engaged in the relief, recovery, rebuilding and reconstruction processes and business opportunities and transactions around them."

Source: Charter of Rights for Disaster Survivors

[edit] Challenges

How can local stakeholders access such an information system after disaster strikes, given that there is little connectivity or power?

We could use SMS for this.

The system should be available not just via web and mobile, but also via SMS messages.

How do we authenticate people via SMS?

How do we prioritize requests or information uploads?
How do we maintain the information posted/sent?

We can leverage the power of the community for this.

Crowdsourcing:

Allow users to flag inappropriate content.

Allow users to raise/lower priority of information posted (either +1/-1, like or not, rate from 1-5, etc.).

Allow the community to tag content so that it ends up in proper categories or areas.

Allow users browsing to filter out flagged content or sort so that higher priority content is visible on top or be the only thing visible to them and of course to navigate through categories or tags.

Should be adaptable/flexible to changing conditions and diverse requirements depending on location, situation, etc.

[edit] Who Needs It

International relief and assistance organizations. Local stakeholders and disaster survivors. Local organizations and government agencies undertaking assistance initiatives.

[edit] Complementary Processes

Beyond the information system to support this approach, the following processes must be designed and implemented:

Local training through self-contained, short period or one time, capacity building units for local stakeholders.
Registration of able local stakeholders and potential service providers.
Mentoring and assistance to local stakeholders so that they organize themselves as social entrepreneurs and local business which qualify as service providers.
Certification process recognized by assistance organizations for local stakeholders and service providers.
Listing of capacity building opportunities (courses offered) and potential for e-learning or download of capacity building and training material for local trainers to implement the courses.

[edit] Additional Information

[edit] Current State and Solutions

RHoK 2.0 - Toronto is working on WeAreHelping, a system to help local responders to track / monitor / respond to help requests. The basic idea is to let locals self-organize during disasters by giving visibility to where urgent help is needed and let capable local responders self-identify and assist. Initial version will be using Twitter but hopefully this system can be extended to SMS to reach a wider audience.