For me personally, the year 2010 has been quite emotional. The tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti has been juxtaposed by the outpouring of human support in response, and we’ve witnessed first-hand how technology can help ordinary people contribute to the emergency response. The folks at Crisis Commons have organized dozens of crisis camps where volunteers contributed to earthquake response, supporting tech tools, building apps and more. Thousands of volunteers contributed to the OpenStreetMap of Port-au-Prince, and hundreds of Haitian-Americans helped translate text messages from Kreyol to English once a Haitian shortcode was established.

Mark and I went to Boston to wait for the safe arrival of the Fletcher students working on Project Einstein: Haiti when the earthquake struck and had the privilege of being in Boston for the launch of the Fletcher Situation Room where we helped train some of the early volunteers who went on to train so many more. Their work has taken Ushahidi to a whole new level, creating new systems of organizing and verifying information. Their energy, devotion and level of coordination has been truly inspiring.  Volunteers from the Fletcher Ushahidi Situation Room have not only mapped over 3,500 incidents, they helped directly coordinate aid and save lives during search and rescue missions.

Most importantly, many of the volunteers around the world who used technology tools to support earthquake relief have done so in an attempt to respect local voices and needs a much as possible. As the Ushahidi-Haiti team works to hand over the platform to local actors, we are inspired by this new approach that demonstrates the power of putting technology in the hands of local actors. It’s an exciting example of global community to take these successes and apply the lessons as a curriculum for other contexts around the world.

Working in the tech sphere, it’s the power and passion that people have that never ceases to astound me. Following the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, people around the world contributed an incredible outpouring of support for the people of Haiti. Now, as that support expands to Chile, it is evident that we are participating in a game changing moment.

On January 12th when the earthquake in Haiti struck, Digital Democracy had two team members on the ground looking at the economic livlihoods of young Haitians . Worried for their safety and the greater loss of life, my colleague Emily and I immediately joined Patrick in the Situation Room at Fletcher, and collaborated with the core team to establish a system that allowed hundreds of volunteers to glean emergency instances from the ground and place them on the map for response. Those first volunteers have trained many more, and their tireless work has directly saved lives.

When an 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Chile on Saturday, we were called on again to train volunteers. The Fletcher Ushahidi team, their hands full with Haiti, was able to rapidly set up the site for Chile.Ushahidi.com, but needed help training new volunteers. Digital Democracy collaborated to adapt the training module for the Situation Room at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and on Sunday night we conducted an hour+ training on Skype for a core team at SIPA at Columbia in New York City who are now running the Chile operations. Their ability to quickly respond to the devastating emergency in Chile, despite it being midterms week, speaks to the dedication and passion of the volunteers. The 10 people we trained on Sunday trained 40 more the next day at SIPA, plus a growing number of volunteers in Santiago.

For us, this has been a particularly rewarding process, as we’ve been following and working with Ushahidi since fall 2008. Watching Ushahidi evolve from mapping post-election violence in Kenya to elections reporting when we helped with VoteReportIndia, we’ve worked to harness Ushahidi to empower ordinary citizens. At Digital Democracy, we’ve applied Ushahidi to map human rights abuses in Burma through Handheld Human Rights and peace mapping in Kenya through Sisi Ni Amani – “We are Peace.” In each case, we’ve worked with local community organizations to determine needs and apply the technology – Ushahidi – to best meet their needs.

Our mission is to utilize technology for civic engagement, and these examples demonstrate how technology can encourage deeper engagement with the world around us. At the core, it’s not the technology but the people who use it. Ushahidi is a tool that’s a key part of our arsenal because of the open community around it. As technology enables more and more people to contribute to meaningful actions to save lives, I for one am excited to see where it leads.

Project Einstein: Haiti is a joint project of Digital Democracy and Tufts University’s Center for Emerging Market Enterprises (CEME). (See the introductory blog post, and the photoset.) Chrissy, Joshua and their fellow Fletcher School students traveled to Haiti to look at economic livelihood issues and the possibilities for mobile banking. In the wake of the tragic events caused by the earthquake, the need for low-cost and accessible technology is clear. As our colleague Josh reported upon re-entry to the United States, “getting a technology that is reliable, secure and usable to the last user is more than paramount, it can be a matter of life and death.”

Although the cameras and photos from Project Einstein: Haiti have been lost, we hope the training last weekend will be a starting point for the young people moving forward. We hope to find a way to get new equipment to the youth so they can document the coming weeks and months, empowering them in relief and reconstruction efforts to have a say in what they want for their community. Please support our efforts and donate to Fonkoze a Haitian Foundation with accomplished networks on the ground who will channel the funds directly to local rebuilding efforts.

See the rest of Chrissy’s testimony on Digital Democracy Tv.

Not on the island? There are many ways you can help. We have been blown away by the collaboration going on in the tech community. Here are some ways to contribute:

1. Help read and log the text messages going into Ushahidi. Check on other needed tasks at the online Situation Room. Emily and Mark were in Boston this week helping in the Boston Situation Room, and Mark is still in Boston helping to coordinate efforts and aggregate information. As of noon EST Jan. 17, more than 580 incidents have been entered at haiti.ushahidi.com

2. Help the Extraordinaries tag photos coming from Haiti so that people can search for their loved ones. Other people finders are being aggregated by Google … check it out at http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/

3. Follow the International Network of Crisis Mappers and Crisis Camp on Twitter for updates. Yesterday, Crisis Camps took place all over the country, and more are expected. Participants worked on iPhone apps, coding, mapping the OpenStreetMap layer, and translation. Check in on CrisisCommons for updates.

Stay tuned for personal stories from Project Einstein: Haiti.

While communication with the island remains limited, colleagues around the world are working hard to use technology to support the efforts on the ground. Check out:
- Ushahidi’s deployment, currently being localized into Kreyol and French. If you have updates from the ground, we encourage you to add them to the map.
- This roundup of efforts from MobileActive
- The CrisisCommons Wiki – documentation of efforts on the ground

Update from our colleagues in Haiti

Project Einstein: Haiti group photo

Last night, we received that our colleagues from Fletcher are safe, however we have not received an update since. News reports make it clear that many buildings are unstable, and electricity and cell phone networks are only working intermittently.

Over the weekend, our colleagues Chrissy Martin and Joshua Haynes launched Project Einstein: Haiti, a joint project of Digital Democracy and Fletcher’s Center for Emerging Market Enterprises (CEME). (See the introductory blog post, and the photoset.) On Saturday and Sunday, they worked with a group of young people between the ages of 18-24, conducting a photo training as well as shooting a few live videos using the Nokia N97. Following the weekend training, they reported having creative and lively discussion with the group, all of whom we hope are safe and secure.

We hope that, in the wake of the tragic events, the photos taken by the youth before and after the earthquake can play a constructive role in their community. We will be sharing their updates as they are available.