Online volunteers, social media, disaster response & the Philippines

United Nations OCHA and the Digital Humanitarian Network are looking for online volunteers to help in geo-tagging twitter messages and images to support relief efforts in the Philippines. Find out more and sign up here, at the UN Volunteers Online Volunteering web site.

Also, other online volunteers across the world are building the digital infrastructure for the organization’s Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts: since Saturday, more than 400 volunteers have made nearly three quarters of a million additions to OpenStreetMap (OSM), regarding areas in and around the Philippines. Those additions reflect the land before the storm, but they will help Red Cross workers and volunteers make critical decisions after it about where to send food, water, and supplies (OSM aims to be a complete map of the world, free to use and editable by all. Created in 2004, it now has over a million users). The Red Cross is using the data. More at this article from the Atlantic.

And, hurrah, the first shipment of Facebook “likes” have arrived in the Philippines (article in German – and is a better criticism of slacktivism or slackavism than anything else).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.