Hurricane Katrina relief veterans Grace Davis and Sara Ford were joined by tsunami aid activist Dina Mehta in discussing best practices for bloggers delivering tangible aid to communities in need. each of these speakers brought a different perspective:
MumbaiHelps was intended to be a repository of information - where to go for financial
aid, medical help, etc. - rather than a formal organization with the capacity to reach out on the ground. The Hurricane Katrina Direct Relief
blog, on the other hand, was designed to support people who wanted to
help those in need. Finally, Ford (a Microsoft program manager, and
Louisiana native) drove outreach through her own blog, taking advantage
of the credibility that she had already developed as a blogger to speak
out and drive people into taking action. Based on the speakers'
experiences, these best practices floated to the top:
Top Five Best Practices
- Help the helpers. Davis made the conscious decision to not help people in need directly. Though it was a tough decision, this one-dimensionality helped to keep efforts focused and impactful.
- Plan to get scammers. Blogging about a disaster will elicit spam submissions for relief. Davis needed to get the story, find out exactly what help they needed, and then verify the situation. Church ladies across the south volunteered to support this task. Mehta's group posted a disclaimer reminding wiki users that none of the information had been verified.
- Get rid of your PayPal button. Davis' blog operated through mothers instead. She found that having an active solicitation button had a negative impact on credibility - made them look like a phishing site or other donation scam. Mehta had the same experience. Ford, on the other hand, had reasonable acceptance given the prexisting credibility of her blog.
- Tell the story. HKDR told poignant stories that weren't appearing in the traditional news media. Davis posted a lot of pictures to both share the situation on the ground and to show donors exactly what they were addressing. Ford, on the other hand, had many requests for photos of what the town looked like before the devastation occurred. Emergency workers needed this context in order to make sense of the piles of debris, to see where the streets were supposed to be within a miles-wide junkyard.
- Facilitate one-on-one connections. Most rescuees will need financial and logistical assistance. Many will also ask for counseling that speaks to their specific situation, and even receiving needed relief can bring up post-traumatic stress. A related point here is to sustain the original context for how and why you got involved as a blogger - over time, it's easy for new readers to come in and not understand your history of involvement.
Miscellaneous Practical Tips
- Keep focused on what you can handle. Mehta, for example, found that the daily updates on her blog ended up turning into a directory of survivor sites. The needs were overwhelming, and so managing the redirection instead was more effective.
- Don't accept clothing, unless you have very specific needs - you will get more than you can handle. Medical supplies are much better.
- Be mindful of the survivor's own experience. It's humbling to be on the receiving end of soup kitchen, and everyone has to go through it when the closest open grocery store is three hours away.
- You need people on the ground in order to get current information.
- Two major categories of resource information are essential: help offered vs. help needed.
Promising Ideas
During open discussion, there were some great audience ideas on how bloggers can contribute to disaster relief:
- Ham radio operator clubs have periodic field days, in which they pack up their gear and generators, and practice how they'd work in a disaster. Why not have a blogging field day, that would enable bloggers to work on how they'd be able to help in case of disaster?
- Bloggers could connect with clubs of many useful stripes - ham radio, off-road driving, etc. - to form collaborative relationships that deliver more effective impact in case of emergency.
- Take advantage of SMS on blogs - services such as 411sync can deliver blog content to cell phones, and many services (including Typepad) support posting to blogs via SMS.
- Work with press associations to get information from individuals into mainstream media. Especially in affected areas, the mainstream media may be the last outlet capable of broadcasting information.
Disaster relief is one way to assist a community, but there are many other ways to involve people in something that they feel deeply about. Mehta's reminder to do so is a point well-taken.
