Haiti: They need your support
January 18th, 2010 Posted in ... OtherWe are entering day 7 after the Haiti earthquake and situations is getting more desperate with supplies running out.
Information can be found all over the Internet, e.g.:
- The Boston Globe has two photo series of 2 and 6 days after the quake.
- A KLM overlay for Google Earth overlaps current GeoEye satellite pictures with old photos showing the extent of the damage.
- Haiti-born Jeff de Brosse has a blog with additional resources.
- Ushahidi has launched a Haiti deployment to aggregate information about the ongoing response efforts (Background info here).
Please find out what you can do to make a difference.
One thing I recommend: Michael Pritchard and his Life Saver water bottles (see his TED talk) is trying to get as many water purification bottles and jerrycans into Haiti. You could support the people in Haiti and the growth of his organization by donating at http://www.lifesaversystems.com/.
Bloggers at the Center for Future Civic media are calling all people involved in ‘people finder’ websites to combine their efforts into one: "Don’t silo your apps". They call upon everyone to use the tri-lingual Google app at http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/.
With the first aid efforts going on, Architecture for Humanity is already thinking about a reconstruction plan.
Two warnings: the people involved in search engine poisoning (e.g. trying to take over your computer by installing malware on it) are of course also trying to lure you into their traps.
If you search for things like ‘haiti earthquake victims’, look at the links before you follow them. And never follow the advice to ‘download a video codec’ or ‘install our free security program because you are infected’.
Also, there will be scammers trying to raise money under false pretenses, Sunbelt Software has a blog entry on how to avoid them.
