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Technology solutions for Haiti

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In the wake of the Haiti earthquake, ad hoc groups of techies are gathering in various cities across the globe to help develop technologies and platforms to assist in relief efforts. The World’s technology correspondent Clark Boyd attended one of those gatherings.

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH/Boston.  Humanitarian efforts in Haiti are still mostly focused on meeting the basic needs of earthquake survivors. Aid workers continue to work around the clock to get food, water and medicine to those in need. But you don’t have to be in Haiti to help.  For the past three weekends, groups of volunteers have gathered in cities across the globe to figure out how to harness technology to assist relief efforts.  The gatherings are called Crisis Camps.  The World’s Clark Boyd went to one in Montreal.

CLARK BOYD: Ten people braved sub-zero temperatures to gather on Saturday in some donated office space here.  Their goal?  To figure out what they could do to help the Haitian relief efforts.

LORRAINE CRAIG: At this point after that, I was on the Internet and I was seeing people from Haiti asking for help and so I …

BOYD: Lorraine Craig organized the Crisis Camp in Montreal. She said it all started when she used Twitter and Google’s People Finder to help a Haitian man locate family members after the quake hit.

CRAIG: Well, I was very happy to see that an average citizen, without a great tech background that, you know, was somewhat nerdy could actually participate in helping people halfway across the world.

BOYD: That sentiment was shared by Laurent Castellucci, who came to offer what he could, his time.

LAURENT CASTELLUCCI: I’ve been hit by the economy. I have no disposable income right now. I can, you know, throw in some fun.  This isn’t really the best use of what I can do to help. So I have some time. Between stressing out, tearing my hair out about, you know, trying to find a  job, I may as well help people who are in worse shape than me.

BOYD: Other attendees had more personal reasons to come to the Crisis Camp.  Stephane Jolicouer-Fidelia is a computer programmer by trade.  Just a few weeks ago, he was planning to visit his mother’s family in Haiti.

JOLICOUER-FIDELIA: I was supposed to go there in mid-February. This is something that kind of  happened all of the sudden.  I had a lot of family that was impacted, but thankfully everyone is safe and everything’s going fine now. It’s just a matter of seeing how I can help from afar.

BOYD: But the question for those assembled in Montreal was, “How best to help?”

NOEL DICKOVER: There’s a whole set of tasks that anyone with a browser can do that are very meaningful, but there’s also some very high-end things that we can get folks working on.

BOYD: Noel Dickover is one of the overall organizers of the Crisis Camps, which continue to take place in cities across the globe.

DICKOVER: We aren’t moving concrete.  We’re not delivering water, and we’re not doing anything with rescuing people. But we can provide situational awareness.  We can provide technology tools that the NGOs and other folks in the field.  And it’s this self-organized groundswell of people that really do care, and come to the table with some incredible thoughts and ideas.

BOYD: More than 30 different projects have sprung up from the crisis camps.  Those projects range from translating text messages, to helping create good maps of Haiti.  It all revolves around the idea of crowd sourcing; ordinary citizens using tech tools to gather and organize information that’s needed on the ground.  In the aftermath of the quake in Haiti, that information could be critical to saving lives even now.

DICKOVER: If everybody starts sharing the data, sticking it on something like an open street map, and everybody else can sort of self organize and making better decisions. And you already see folks like the U.N. and the World Bank looking at how they can make that happen as well. So, crowd sourcing techniques, we think, have real viability to getting a better sense of what’s occurring in an area that you otherwise wouldn’t know anything about.

BOYD: The Montreal Crisis Camp ended without any concrete plans for projects, but there were a number of good ideas.  Attendees with family ties to Haiti were looking into how to tap into the wider Haitian Diaspora community in town.  One woman was looking into whether her website for helping people with post-traumatic stress disorder might be useful for Haitians. Laurent Castellucci, a writer, said he wanted to help translate complex technical jargon into plain French.

CASTELLUCCI: Mini instruction booklets written clearly, concisely, getting that translated into French.  We have Francophone speakers here.  We have some access to some Creole speakers.  If we can get stuff translated directly into Creole that’s written as simple instructions to

be whatever we want to implement to make it directly available to them, there is something we could do. And you know, if it ends up being that I’m another body, you know, tagging some geo source tags and doing whatever to help out, that’s the joy of crowd sourcing, you know, that every little bit of that helps.  And I’m fine being an anonymous part of the crowd.

BOYD: Another attendee told me, “We need to figure out where we can fit in without interfering.”

We plan our actions, he said, and then move forward in a fast, furious but focused manner.”  There will be a second Crisis Camp meeting here next weekend.  For the World this is Clark Boyd, Montreal.

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