{"id":1202,"date":"2015-04-27T14:15:22","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T21:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2015-04-27T14:15:22","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T21:15:22","slug":"icthelpnepal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2015\/04\/icthelpnepal\/","title":{"rendered":"When ICT help goes wrong: warning for aid workers going to Nepal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a comment I read on\u00a0one of the many online discussion groups I follow, and I think it is really <strong>important for aid workers to keep in mind when going to developing countries to help<\/strong>, particularly in post-disaster situations. I&#8217;ve removed any specific identifying information, and any emphasis is mine:<\/p>\n<p><em>One issue we\u2019ve observed many times when doing relief work, perhaps worst in the 2004 tsunami, the 2003 conflict in the Congo, and 2010 in Haiti, is that areas with modest ICT infrastructure that was adequate to the sustainable needs of their market, are <strong>swamped by aid workers with immodest expectations<\/strong>. i.e. a desire to video-chat with their families every day, play WoW, <\/em><em> and download video porn. So they all show up, and<\/em><em>\u00a0declare \u201crepairing the Internet infrastructure\u201d (to levels never before seen) to be their first priority. <strong>They run rough-shod over the local infrastructure operators, step on <\/strong>carefully-regulated <\/em><strong><em>or carefully-negotiated frequency allocations, etc.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>I very much hope we won\u2019t have to deal with that in this case. Nepal\u2019s ICT environment is mature, its professionals are expert, and its community is well connected. If and when they need help, they\u2019re perfectly capable of indicating what help they need, and anyone from the outside who believes they know better is WRONG. So, if you\u2019re interested in helping, by all means, make your availability known to any of the many other ICT professionals in-country, but <strong>please don\u2019t assume that you know what\u2019s needed, or worse, that they don\u2019t.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Swedish-Finnish telco TeliaSonera operates in Nepal and is engaged in relief efforts, and is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.teliasonera.com\/en\/newsroom\/news\/2015\/update-on-the-earthquake-i-nepal\" target=\"_blank\">urging everyone in Nepal<\/a> to communicate whenever possible by SMS rather than voice in order to minimize the strain of the network.<\/p>\n<p>Also see:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2015\/04\/26\/nepal\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">How to help Nepal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a comment I read on\u00a0one of the many online discussion groups I follow, and I think it is really important for aid workers to keep in mind when going to developing countries to help, particularly in post-disaster situations. I&#8217;ve removed any specific identifying information, and any emphasis is mine: One issue we\u2019ve observed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[1057,153,1052,235,244,249,1058,1051,476,477,1059],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-relationsoutreach","tag-aid-workers","tag-disaster","tag-earthquake","tag-help","tag-humanitarian","tag-ict","tag-infrastructure","tag-nepal","tag-tech","tag-tech4good","tag-telecom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-jo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1203,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}