Developers Band Together to Create Apps for Haiti
Total donations to Haiti Earthquake relief funds now exceed $355 million, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, but money isn’t the only thing being donated — many tech professionals are donating their time as well.
Along with volunteer and NGO workers on the ground in Haiti, people in cities around the world are getting together each weekend for so-called Crisis Camps in an effort to develop helpful technologies to bolster the efforts of relief organisations
The brainchild of the grassroots CrisisCommons organisation, which maintains a network of technology volunteers and organizes their response during times of crisis, there are Crisis Camps happening in 12 different cities this weekend. At each camp, technology professionals will come together and their donate time to develop tools — or improve existing tools — in direct response to the needs of people and volunteers in disaster-affected areas. Volunteers in multiple cities can work in tandem on the same projects.
“What we hope to have happen is regular people realise there’s a new way they can contribute to the problem. It’s not just delivering money,” Crisis Camps co-founder Noel Dickover told BBC Radio this week. “Now they can actually impact the situational awareness on the ground.”
Read the full story at Mashable