Tag Archives: disaster

Spontaneous “online volunteers” after disasters

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When a big news story or disaster strikes, the result can be hundreds, even thousands, of people contacting organizations to offer help, including potential online volunteers. It could be a natural disaster, an act of violence, or a particular issue suddenly becoming the hot item on the news. A nonprofit organization, NGO, school, or other organization could suddenly be swamped with emails and phone calls from people who want to help in some way online.

Of course it’s appropriate for your organization to encourage these spontaneous online volunteering candidates to make an emergency financial donation to the organization — and be explicit about exactly what this money will be used for. But in addition, you should think about ways these spontaneous online volunteering candidates could engage in other activities to benefit your organization in a crisis situation:

  • Put up a page on your web site specifically for these people thanking them for wanting to help in this time of crisis or intense attention. Outline on that page all of the ways they can help your organization both as donors and online volunteers. Direct them to other organizations if there are ways to volunteer at these organizations in some way.
  • Encourage these spontaneous online volunteering candidates to subscribe to your email newsletter, your blog, your FaceBook account and/or your Twitter feed, wherever you are posting photos online, etc., to stay up-to-date on what your organization is doing to address whatever issue or circumstance is occurring.
  • Encourage them to repost your messages to their own blogs, their own status updates on online social networking sites, etc., to educate their friends and colleagues about what is happening. Direct them to where to find information about the online volunteering activities you have available.
  • Encourage them to write you if they see misinformation online about your organization and its work in this crisis situation.
  • Set up a YahooGroup or GoogleGroup only for these potential online volunteers, and tell them online volunteering opportunities will be announced on this group as soon as they become available. You could use the group to brainstorm with these potential online volunteers what activities they could undertake for your organization.

Some things these spontaneous online volunteers could do regarding this crisis or immediate high-profit situation:

  • Translate some of your existing web site material, flyers, blogs, Facebook status updates or new information into another language
  • Translate texts or blog comments coming into your organization from another language into English, so you can read and respond to such.
  • Monitor media reports and bring certain articles or information to your immediate attention.
  • Monitor online communities and blogs and bring certain information, and even misinformation, to your immediate attention (more on how to deal with misinformation).
  • Research what other organizations are doing that your organization might need to urgently know about, such as projects that are mapping eyewitness/on-the-ground reports of critical needs. For instance, following the Haiti Earthquake, OpenStreetMap created a crisis mapping project, mobilizing highly skilled online volunteers to layer up-to-the-minute data, such as the location of new field hospitals and downed bridges, onto post-quake satellite imagery. This data was made freely available by for-profit companies including GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. The digital cartography — informed by everything from Tweets to eyewitness reports — helped aid workers speed food, water and medicine to where it was needed most.
  • Create a smart phone application that is urgently needed. CrisisCamp mobilized hundreds of online and onsite volunteers in Washington, DC; London, England; Mountain View, California; and elsewhere to build and refine a variety of tech tools needed after the Earthquake in Haiti, including a basic Creole-English dictionary for the iPhone to help aid.

These are not just nice things for online volunteers to do in a crisis; they are critical services. Depending on the mission of your organization, you might want to consider including how to deal with spontaneous online volunteering candidates in your crisis communications plans.

The above information is from the revised Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, which will be published later in 2013.

For those that want to help those affected by Sandy

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For all of you wanting to volunteer to help people affected by Hurricane Sandy, and all of you wanting to donate clothing, food, or other things to help those affected by Sandy, please see these two resources ASAP:

Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters

Donating Things Instead of Cash or Time (In-Kind Contributions)

Let’s give the REAL help that’s needed – or get out of the way and let those who know how to help do their jobs!

 

People not following-through on volunteering in disasters

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The state of Queensland, Australia suffered from horrific floods in December 2010 and January 2011. Thousands of Australians expressed interest in volunteering, inundating volunteer centers and online message boards.

Recently, Volunteering Queensland offered this Submission to Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry, which said, in part:

QUEENSLAND’S peak volunteer organisation says the vast majority of people who registered to help clean up following the floods and cyclone Yasi backed off at the last minute.

Some people backed out because they realized this was a real commitment of time, and they couldn’t make that real commitment. Some dropped out because they could not donate a significant amount of time – an hour or two when you might have some time eventually is usually not enough for such a situation. Some backed out because they really were not prepared to volunteer (they hadn’t set up child care, time off from work, transportation, etc.).

Seasoned volunteer managers, of course, aren’t surprised. Even in a non-disaster situation, we have come to expect at least 50 percent of people who express interest in volunteering to drop out. That’s why many volunteer managers, including myself, insist on at least a bit of screening before a volunteer is placed into an assignment, so that drop outs happen in the screening process, not after the assignment is given and we’re counting on those volunteers.

Martin Cowling has done a great blog about this Queensland report, and I encourage you to head over to it, read it, read the comments (yes, I’ve commented there) and respond yourself.

Here is a resource I created following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters, which I’ve regularly updated at least monthly every since, per the over-whelming number of posts to places like YahooAnswers by people who want to volunteer following a disaster (earthquake, hurricane, tornado, tropical storm, flood, tsunami, oil spill, zombies, etc.). It’s become one of the most popular pages on my web site, despite being posted as almost an after-thought and being focused on people that the majority of my web site is not focused on (it’s not even linked from my home page!).

Tags: volunteering, volunteers, relief, disaster, response, spontaneous, episodic, microvolunteer, microvolunteering. communications, public relations, engagement, engage, community, nonprofit, NGO, not-for-profit, government, outreach, staff, employees, civil society, floods, tornadoes

 

Helping Southern states in the USA

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Disaster is striking in the American Southeast. Recent tornadoes and current flooding have brought devastation and heartache to many parts of the South, and messages are everywhere on various online communities, asking how to help. There is an incredible amount of misinformation being posted about how to help as well.

If you want to help the states affected by recent tornadoes and current flooding in the USA, you can:

  • Watch the news, and when you hear a county name for a state that is being affected, or a city name, look up the American Red Cross chapter, or the local Humane Society/ASPCA/animal welfare organization serving that area on Google. Most of these will have a web site that allows you do donate directly to the organization. The Red Cross provides emergency housing and various other emergency services to local people, but usually doesn’t allow pets in their emergency shelters; local animal shelters are struggling with abandoned pets and pets that aren’t allowed into emergency shelters. Your donations provide desperately needed funds to help both food and animals! The Red Cross estimates that it will spend as much as $31 million responding to these recent disasters; you can donate to the national chapter, but many feel better donating directly to chapters serving an affected area.
  • If you want to volunteer in a disaster-affected area, you need to be entirely self-funded and self-sufficient, formally affiliated with a credible organization, and have full approval of that organization to go to the area and serve as a volunteer. People affected by these disasters need to be protected from unscrupulous people who may use this situation to take advantage of others (it’s already happening), and people affected by these disasters deserve trained people who won’t end up having to be cared for themselves because they are woefully unprepared (yes, it happens). Here’s much more about the realities of volunteering to help after major disasters.
  • Unless you have read on a web site by an organization in the affected area that they are accepting donations of food and clothing, do NOT start gathering food and clothing for the affected area. It’s often much cheaper – and much safer – for a relief organization to buy food and ship it to an area, knowing they are buying exactly what’s needed, knowing the food is not spoiled, knowing it’s appropriate, etc., than to ask for donations and have to spend endless hours figuring out what food is usable, what is not, and trying to put together meals based on what is donated. If you are determined to donate items for an affected area, then call the local Red Cross and local communities of faith in the affected area and ask if they will accept what you are gathering to donate. And be prepared to drive to the area yourself – no one is going to come pick them up from you, as they are much too busy dealing with disaster victims. Also, note that organizations are saying they CANNOT handle any more used toys or cast-off clothing (they would prefer cleaning supplies and diapers!). More on donating things instead of cash or time (in-kind contributions).
  • You can also look at the web sites of high schools serving these affected areas; if they are in need of something (prom dresses, school supplies, etc.), they will say so directly on their web site.

Obviously, donating financially is the way to go if you really want to help. Even just $10 will help – and, yes, you can afford $10 (don’t buy coffee shop coffee for a few days, make your lunch for a few days, don’t eat from any restaurants all week, reduce your cable package subscription to the most basic for a month or two, etc.).

Use this as an incentive to call your local American Red Cross, right now, and start getting training for disaster in your own area. Why not at least call and attend the next volunteer orientation? There’s no obligation to volunteer just for attending the orientation!

Tags: nonprofit, NGO, not-for-profit, outreach, disaster, volunteer, tornado, flood, earthquake, tsunami, volunteers, donations, donate, canned goods, clothing, clothes

When mega-news strikes

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You’ve got an event or major announcement planned for today. You’ve had the blog and the tweets and the Facebook status updates and the press release all ready to go for many days. You were ready to start posting at 9 a.m., and have a schedule for messages for the rest of the day.

And then – mega-news strikes. Not just big news – MEGA-news. that kind of HUGE event that pushes everything else off the news cycle for HOURS. Even days. That people will talk about for years to come: “Where were you when you heard about such-and-such?”

And you know that absolutely no one is going to read your messages, no one is going to retweet you, no press people are going to call you, and, perhaps, no one is going to attend your event.

What to do?

A lot of you are facing this today. I’m seeing some of nonprofits trying to insert their important announcements amid the endless messages relating to Osama bin Ladan. They probably know it’s a lost cause, but they did all this planning, they hate for it to go to waste…

What should you do with your event or major announcement when mega-news strikes?

It depends…

If your announcement was meant to generate press coverage, retweets, signups, etc., consider pushing the announcement a day or two later, even for a week, if at all possible. If that’s not possible, then revamp your schedule to include a reminder blitz in two or three days, and push your event signup deadlines as late as possible.

Do not cancel your event unless you are absolutely sure no one is going to show up or that the press is absolutely NOT going to cover your announcement.

And consider this: your event might actually be a gathering that people are needing, particularly if the mega-news is tragic. Consider what happened to Knowbility in 2001:

Knowbility is a nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas, and their signature event is the Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR), where volunteer teams of Web designers and developers with nonprofit organizations get together and build new Web sites (or enhance existing ones) to make them more accessible for people with disabilities and/or using assistive technologies. The teams meet the nonprofits they will work with mid week, spend an evening together, and then the web-building day is two or three days later, on a Saturday – all the teams come together in one place and go crazy with the one-day web-buildling. You’ve heard of barn-raisings? This is a web-raising! But in 2001, the day the teams were supposed to meet the nonprofits they were matched with was — the evening of September 12. The day before, on September 11, there was talk of canceling AIR. But someone said, “No, let’s do it. Maybe people will need this.” And so the events were held, as scheduled. And attendance was not only excellent, but the event evauations were filled with comments about how grateful people were to have had the opportunity to do something at a time when they were filling quite helpless. The event became one of the most special Knowbility ever held.

If you go ahead with your event in the midst of a mega-news event, be ready for the mega-news to come up and be discussed at your event. You may need to provide some time for that to happen. But it’s also okay to say, at some point, “Okay, let’s focus for the next hour on the reason we are here today…”

How to help Alabama & surrounding areas

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This is the address of the Alabama Red Cross serving the areas hardest hit by the tornado, including Tuscaloosa. Donate directly to them if you want help to get quickly to those in most need. The Red Cross provides food, shelter, vital information and connections to the government and health resources local people are in desperate need of right now – and will continue to do so in the weeks to come.

The Humane Society of West Alabama is in need of financial help – they’ve suffered some serious damage and can’t take in all the abandoned and lost animals in need. The Greater Birmingham Humane Society will also need help with the influx of lost and abandoned pets. Making a donation will help buy food and pay for medical services. Adopting a pet from this or any nearby shelter will free up space for other animals.

For other areas, simply look up the state and county’s American Red Cross chapter or Humane Society or animal shelter on Google.

Unless you have extensive medical, engineering, logistics, health care or emergency management experience in post-disaster zones, and unless you are *already* affiliated with an emergency response agency (American Red Cross), and you are fully self-sufficient (you have a place to stay, you have transportation and fuel, etc.), DO NOT GO. If you do, you will be in the way and you will be a drain on resources (food, gas, etc.).

If you enjoyed the Royal Wedding today, why not make a donation to any of the above in honor of such? Or in honor of anyone you love? In honor of your own pets?

Also see:
Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters
(earthquake, hurricane, tropical storm, flood, tsunami, oil spill, etc.)

Please call your local American Red Cross and get training NOW for disasters LATER. They have training specifically for disaster response!

Volunteer with your local animal shelter NOW and build up your skills and your credibility so that you will be in a place to provide critically-need help in the future.

 

 

Free Manuals on Preparation for Disaster Recovery

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In light of recent events in Japan, someone posted information about this publication on one of the many online groups I’m a part of: a free disaster recovery manual, How to Help Your Community Recover from Disaster: A Manual for Planning and Action available free for download.

[ July 2017 update: the aforementioned links to this resource have been corrected. It was originally published in 2010 at http://www.scra27.org/resources/disasterresources/scra_manual_final5810pdf ]

Chapters cover the steps required to understand the potential effects of disaster, organize the community, assess its needs, make an action plan, choose a strategy or strategies for intervention, reach out to various constituencies, track results, and share lessons learned. This is a USA-focused manual, but it’s easily adapted to a variety of settings.

The 104-page text, published in 2010, is grounded in psychological principles closely linked to disaster recovery. It was created by the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA) Task Force on Disaster, Community Readiness, and Recovery Department of Psychology, “a diverse group of researchers, evaluators, and community practitioners.”

One of the sections I like best is Part VI on “Types of Communities and Outreach to Diverse Groups,” which talks about non-obvious communities-within-communities – those who may not be reached by the usual community communication channels. Too often, this type of manual never discusses hard-to-reach individuals and communities within a neighborhood, town or city, like immigrants, people with low-literacy, religious minorities, people who have isolated themselves from neighbors and even the government, and others. Some of these groups are more visible than others, and in thinking about how to address community needs after a disaster, you have to know who makes up your “community.” Unlike many other how-to manuals regarding community work, this manual bluntly discusses the necessity to assess and discuss levels of mistrust among various individuals and groups, to recognize and understand differing cultural beliefs and practices, the necessity to “build authentic human relationships” with a variety of community representatives, and disaster planning for people with disabilities.

(I once asked a fellow aid worker in Afghanistan how our agency was working to reach various under-represented groups in our rural organizing and capacity-building governance work, including women. He replied, “It’s not our job to try to reach those groups. We’re only obligated to work with official leadership. To do otherwise is to not be culturally-respectful.” That comment still burns me.)

A criticism of the document: it mentions spontaneous volunteers, but doesn’t talk about what to do with them or how to respond to them. In disaster situations, the last thing you want are unaffiliated, untrained volunteers handling chainsaws, interacting with or transporting children or other vulnerable people affected by disaster, and engaging in other activities that could, at least, lead to misunderstandings and missteps and, at worst, lead to harm. See this blog on dealing with spontaneous online volunteers, who often overwhelm nonprofit and government offices after a disaster.

People in Aid also has a fantastic primer for organizations who want to develop their own emergency resources for sudden on-set disaster response.

[ July 2017 update: People in Aid is no more! And its wonderful disaster management wiki is gone as well. Luckily, you can still find it by cutting and pasting this URL into archive.org: http://www.peopleinaid.org/interactive/Wikis/MPE/Home ]

Ofcourse, the best preparation for disaster is getting people into disaster-response training programs now, such as through the American Red Cross.

Also see Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters – my own resource which has been rather popular recently (this is a monetized page on my site, so I’ll be donating the money I’ve raised beyond my monthly goal for April to a Japan-focused charity).

No, You Should Not Go to Japan to Volunteer

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Whenever a disaster strikes, thousands of people in countries all over the world start contacting various organizations and posting to online groups in an effort to try to volunteer onsite at the disaster site.

But what most of these people don’t realize is that spontaneous volunteers without the specific, high-level training and expertise that’s actually needed in the area, no affiliation with a credible agency and no local language skills can actually cause more problems than they alleviate in a disaster situation. The priority in these situations is helping the people affected by the disaster, NOT diverting resources to house, transport and otherwise take care of outsiders. In many of these situations, there is NO food, shelter or services to spare for outside volunteers. Volunteers coming into post-disaster areas have to be absolutely self-sustaining for days, even weeks, bringing in all of their own food and shelter. No shelter or safety measures can be provided to volunteers by the government or local people in many of these situations.

Japan and Haiti are incredibly complicated situations that require people with a very high degree of qualifications and long-term commitment, not just good will, a sense of urgency and short-term availability. These volunteers need to be extensively vetted, to ensure not only that they have the proper training and emotional stability to handle a post-crisis, low infrastructure situation, but also, to ensure they aren’t there to take advantage of unattended houses and shops, or even to exploit disaster victims.

Also, more and more agencies are hiring local people themselves, even immediately after a disaster, to clean rubble, remove dead bodies, build temporary housing, rebuild homes and essential buildings, and prepare and distribute food. Hiring and coordinating local people to do these activities themselves, rather than bringing people in from the outside, helps stabilize local people’s lives much more quickly!

People outside of disaster zones also start gathering supplies from family, neighbors and co-workers, envisioning themselves packing up the boxes of supplies and some organization somewhere paying to ship those boxes to post-disaster zones. But it is so much cheaper and more efficient for response agencies to buy and ship these items from areas that are MUCH closer to an affected area that most (all?) refuse these items. Plus, it’s better for relief agencies to buy clothing, shoes, medicine, toiletries, etc. new, or to accept donations in bulk directly from manufacturers and retailers, rather than going through donations made by countless numbers of individuals, which are filled with inappropriate items.

What to do with all these people calling your agency or posting to online groups saying, “I took a First Aid class a few years ago – how can I go to Japan and help?!?” Explain to them why they won’t be going, and strongly encourage them to get training now for possible disasters in their own geographic area instead. I direct people to the Red Cross, telling them that it will take at least a year to go through all of the training provided, and if they aren’t ready to make that training commitment, they aren’t ready to be a volunteer in disaster zones. Volunteering with an organization that helps people locally in other kinds of crisis situations — a domestic violence shelter, a suicide hotline, a crisis center, etc. is also excellent training that is valued by those mobilizing post-disaster volunteers.

Here is what aid agencies are doing in Japan. I also direct people to these agencies to donate financially.

Also see this article on DIY volunteers in Haiti.

The numbers for my page Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters are through the roof. Because this is one of the pages I have monatized, I’ll be donating all of the ad revenue generated for March by this page to the American Red Cross.

Also see this essay: Why Waiting to Give to Japan is a Good Idea.

train now for disasters later

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For almost 100 minutes, dozens of people took turns performing CPR and administering other first aid on a man crumpled on a freezing sidewalk in Goodhue, Minnesota, USA – population about 900, a town without a traffic light. It took almost 100 minutes for the May Clinic’s emergency helicopter to get to the fallen man. The first responders were volunteer fire fighters, police, and rescue squads, made up of both volunteers and paid staff, from neighboring towns. Their teamwork kept blood flowing to the man’s brain, making each rescuer a surrogate for his failing heart. And it worked: the man survived, resulting in what may be one of the longest, most successful out-of-hospital resuscitations ever.

The key to responding to a crisis successfully, whether its one person collapsing in front of you or an entire city collapsing around you, is training now for what might happen later. Getting training now in CPR and first aid, as well as disaster response (all available in the USA from your local chapter of the American Red Cross), can help later. What happened in Goodhue, Minnesota or in any disaster zone shows that: the people who are able to help immediately, the people who are able to make a real difference, are the people who made the time to register to volunteer, to get the necessary training, etc.

Whenever a disaster strikes, hundreds — even thousands — of people start contacting various organizations in an effort to try to volunteer onsite at the disaster site. The images and stories motivate these people to help immediately, in-person. But what most of these people don’t realize is that spontaneous volunteers with no training and no affiliation can actually cause more problems than they alleviate in a crisis or disaster situation. The priority in these situations is helping the people affected by the crisis or disaster, NOT giving spontaneous, unaffiliated volunteers an outlet for their desire to help.

During and after disasters, what’s desperately needed is equipment, supplies and expertise in disaster situations — that’s the priority. Disasters are incredibly complicated situations that require people with a very high degree of qualifications and long-term commitment, not just good will, a sense of urgency and short-term availability. Unless you have a formal affiliation with a recognized disaster relief organization, and training with that organization, you are probably going to be turned away if you want to help onsite.

If you have been moved by a disaster to help in some way immediately, please consider donating financially. Money is desperately needed in these situations to purchase food, up-to-date medicine, shelter, transportation for trained staff, and supplies. Disaster relief organizations cannot rely only on donations of these materials, and don’t have the resources in a crisis situation to go through them and make sure they are appropriate, clean, not expired, etc.; having finances means they can buy what they need, often in-country, and move much more quickly — and time is of the essence in these situations.

In addition to giving funds yourself, you can help by making sure friends and associates know how to give (you might be surprised how many people don’t know where or how to). A simple link on your own site or blog, a link at the end of your emails, an update on your status on FaceBook or MySpace or whatever, telling people how to donate financially, can be a huge help.

If you REALLY want to make a difference for developing countries suffering from a disaster, please make a financial donation to MercyCorps or the American Red Cross. For developed countries, like New Zealand or Japan, check the news and the internet for what agencies in those countries are saying they want – and don’t want. Please, no clothing drives or food drives, unless the American Red Cross says that’s what’s needed — it’s CASH that will pay for the things people need right now. Update your online profiles/status pages to encourage your friends to do the same.

If you want to truly help with a crisis situation or disaster, beyond financial donations, start thinking NOW about ways to get the training and affiliations you need to do such effectively for future emergency situations. There are many ways you can put yourself into a position for such in the future. Here’s why you need such training, and ways to get it.

And for agencies: People in Aid has a fantastic primer for organizations who want to develop their own emergency resources for sudden on-set disaster response. It’s something to do now. Good info for a funding proposal!

Aid in Haiti is failing

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A few weeks ago, the radio show This American Life did an great show focused on aid in Haiti. If you want to understand the roadblocks to improving things in Haiti, it’s worth your time to listen to this show. Notice how some of the blocks are because of policies donors have implemented to try to prevent corruption.

It can be hard to get your mind around, but aid actually sometimes harms people, rather than helping, even in Haiti. There are stories of rice farmers in rural parts of Haiti not being able to sell their crops because, with all the rice donations from other countries, there is no market for products. Would-be Haitian contractors are also missing out on jobs because foreign contractors are being chosen by aid agencies instead. Sometimes cheaper, or even most modern, doesn’t mean better, in the long-term, for local people needing the aid.

Time has a story Haiti’s Failed Recovery: Who’s to Blame? that presents the two camps regarding why recovery in Haiti is failing:

For the anti-NGO camp, Haiti is a case study in the hypocrisy of the global relief bandwagon that descends on poor countries victimized by wars, famine and natural disasters. A growing chorus of critics accuses humanitarian-aid groups of using misery to validate their existence, spending funds inefficiently and creating a culture of dependence among the people they are supposed to help… If you belong to the “blame Haiti” camp, you’re less likely to ascribe the post earthquake mess to outsiders than to the country’s defective political culture. In recent years, development economists have sought to explain why some countries lift themselves out of poverty while others chronically underachieve. Stable, transparent institutions – like police, courts and banks – are critical to the success of poor nations. But Haiti’s long history of disarray has left it with few institutions worthy of trust. For those who emphasize such internal factors, Haiti wouldn’t be saved even if every dollar of aid money were spent and every NGO disappeared tomorrow. Until the country’s political class proves it can govern, Haiti’s people will continue to suffer.

I certainly offer no solution — it’s a systemic problem across sectors that defies a simplistic solution. I will say that aid agencies need to be reading these stories and looking at their messages to the public and to donors. They need to be showing how many local staff they are hiring versus how many foreign staff they are bringing in, and highlighting what steps they are taking so that Haitians are not just contributing to their own relief, they are leading it, and will eventually take over from the aid agency completely. They also have to be open about corruption – don’t shy away from talking about problems with transparency, even if it’s just in internal reports or reports to donors.

It’s not time to give up. But it is time to pay greater attention.

ADDITION ON JAN. 12:

John Mitchell, Director of ALNAP (Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action) has posted a blog about how the media is portraying what is happening in Haiti. It’s very much worth your time to read.