Supporting disaster affected communities in Haiti using FrontlineSMS
Guest post from Andy Chaggar, Executive Director of European Disaster Volunteers (EDV) who are using FrontlineSMS in Haiti: 'Doing' the FrontlineSMS logo \o/ Photo credit: European Disaster Volunteers (EDV) European Disaster Volunteers’ mission is to help disaster affected communities worldwide achieve sustainable recovery. This means doing more than simply addressing the damage caused by disasters; it also means addressing the underlying,... Read More
UN uses FrontlineSMS to help manage aid response in East Africa
By Lisa LaRochelle, FrontlineSMS Project Assistant FrontlineSMS is being used for social change in many different ways across the world. Common use case examples include election monitoring, provision of health information, and agricultural support – these kinds of use cases have direct positive impact on people’s lives. Yet here at FrontlineSMS we have seen increasing numbers using FrontlineSMS for organisational management, which has indirect... Read More
Combating food insecurity in Northern Kenya
infoasaid is a consortium of Internews and the BBC World Service Trust. The objective is to improve how aid agencies communicate with disaster-affected communities – the focus is on providing humanitarian information. The emphasis is on the need to deliver information, as aid itself, through the most appropriate channels. In this guest blog post first published on their website, infoasaid highlight some of the innovating approaches they... Read More
What could an SMS do in humanitarian aid? Monitor a programme, send in a complaint… and administer a cash transfer?
Lawrence Haddad’s recent column in the Guardian (23rd June) got me thinking about ways to use mobile to enable communities to hold agencies, whether governmental or not, to account for the aid they provide. This is a critical element of good development and aid work. As Haddad says; Helping communities report on whether the aid reached them is a good contribution to fixing the broken feedback loop in international development and to reducing... Read More
Using SMS in disaster response – and preparedness
A view over Grahamstown from Rhodes U campus A couple of weeks ago I had the great pleasure, and honour, of joining a wonderful panel, including Carel Pedre, Haiti DJ and activist, and Rory Williams of Carbonsmart.com, at the 5th Digital Citizen Indaba in Grahamstown, South Africa. The brief was to talk about digital communication in the context of natural disasters and climate change. I’ve spent the last three years working on humanitarian... Read More
