Relief 2.0: Effective collaboration approach to disaster relief and preparedness

Our Relief 2.0 approach focuses in engaging local stakeholders as key to the long term success of relief initiatives. Massive relief efforts fail to acknowledge local capacity and often obliterate what is left of local infrastructure and resources by displacing them with foreign aid which faces plenty of challenges when dealing with local issues.

A more effective, long-term effective impact is achieved...

• by increasing local disaster preparedness in all social and professional areas and enabling collaboration of foreign relief efforts with local resources,
• and through multidisciplinary and mixed (local/foreign) small independent units in the field, empowered to assess each situation and make decissions on their own, supported by telecommunications and a distributed network of contacts which monitors and follows their activities and requests via mobile phones, SMS, twitter feed, blogs and social networks and relays any need they have to others who can in turn relay to others until the needs are fullfilled by someone in a broad network of volunteers, stakeholders and concerned institutions.

As opposed to top-down, rigid chains of command and action, these units form a distributed open network where each member has connections in multiple directions and is willing to hook up to other networks. When confronted with a a problem, each unit solves it with self initiative without waiting to be told what to do, and when unable to do so, relays the need and enables others to help. For more information, see our hands-on approach and collaborative efforts on:

• Relief 2.0 in Haiti
• Relief 2.0 in Chile