Social Media 4 Good » UN

How the UN want to use Big Data to spot crises

Timo — Tue, 15 May 2012 07:18:04 +0000

In the presentation I embedded below, Robert Kirkpatrick from the UN’s Global Pulse team is talking about how United Nations agencies would like to use big data to search for crises in real-time. It’s a fascinating talk and Kirkpatrick shows how his team has been using data mining techniques to monitor bread prices in Latin America and rice prices in Indonesia.

Data highlights changes in behaviour

Equally interesting is what he would like to do in the future: for example get information showing the streams of money being sent via mobile banking in developing countries. If the UN could see changes in behaviour, he argues, then they might be able to spot issues that are in the process of developing.

If, for example, people in a certain region stop saving money to their mobile bank accounts and if at the same time there is a significant increase in money being sent from the capital to that region (presumably by relatives), then this could indicate that there is cash-flow in that region problem which might warrant additional investigation.

It’s an interesting idea, though clearly fraught with all kinds of legal and technical difficulties.

Behind the scenes of the American Red Cross Digital Operations Centre

Timo — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:45:43 +0000

I’m currently travelling and don’t have a lot of time to blog. But I just came across a blog post that I wanted to share with you: Patrick Meier visited the American Red Cross headquarters in Washington D.C. and got a tour of the brand new Digital Operations Center which AmCross is using to monitor social media during emergencies.

The set-up is quite impressive and I think shows what you have to invest, if you are serious about making social media monitoring an integral part of your emergency response operations – unless you rely mainly only the distributed power of volunteers in the crowd. I really hope that AmCross will also make this amazing resource available to other Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

And while I can’t see OCHA ever having the resources to build something similar for UN agencies, I would hope that they at least schedule a visit and take a look.

Behind the Scenes: The Digital Operations Center of the American Red Cross

YouTube’s new guide for non-profit organizations

Timo — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:54:21 +0000

Video is an amazing vehicle to connect with your supporters emotionally, to give your beneficiaries a voice and to show the impact of your programmes. YouTube and Facebook are without doubt the most relevant channels, if you want to reach as many people as possible with video (sorry, Vimeo) but using YouTube to its maximum potential can be challenging.

Most people know how to upload and share a video, but many people and organizations struggle with any steps beyond the basics. YouTube has now published an excellent free “playbook” for non-profit organizations and NGOs that can help you use YouTube more effectively.

This guide should be required reading for any organization that either already uses YouTube or is planning to use it. It is particularly useful for decentralised organisations where many offices/chapters/branches have their own YouTube channels.

The guide covers all the basics, like titles and descriptions, but also explains more advanced topics like branding and channel overlays. In addition, YouTube shares good practice around digital story telling and how to make your audience part of your story.

The only thing I didn’t like about the playbook is that it fails to mention that accepting donations through Google Checkout is only possible for organizations in a very limited number of country.

Download the “Playbook Guide: YouTube for Good” (pdf).

Getting to know UN acronyms ….

Timo — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 07:31:59 +0000

While taking the bus to work yesterday, I noticed the woman next to me reading this paper. And I just had to take a photo!

As anyone who has working in the humanitarian sector knows, our love for acronyms is pretty ridiculous.

In Haiti we even printed the most important ones on the back of t-shirts so that we could look them up more easily. The problem was – most of the changed so quickly that the t-shirt production couldn’t keep up.

No related posts.

What’s this World Humanitarian Day?

Timo — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:01:12 +0000

Last year, when I heard about World Humanitarian Day for the first time, my first impulse was that this sounded pretty self-righteous. I mean, where is the World Firemen Day or the World Truckdriver Day? Two professions that are very dangerous and that probably contribute more to people’s lives than most professional aid workers do.

Since then I have changed my minds slightly. For one thing, there is never anything objectionable about remembering colleagues who have died. But more importantly I think that this day is not only about professional aid workers. For me it is about everybody who takes risks to help other people. And that can be a Red Cross Red Crescent volunteer, a UN staff member, a teacher, an imam or a truck driver. And in that sense I’m very happy to celebrate World Humanitarian Day.

Social Media as a Tool for Humanitarian Protection

First week in Haiti

Timo — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:32:50 +0000

Since I have arrived in Haiti I don’t need an alarm clock any longer. At 06:30 the heat in my tent is so stifling that I cannot bear staying inside any longer. But even if it wasn’t so hot – the noise of the five other people I’m sharing the tent with would be more than enough to wake me. Anybody who thinks that aid workers in Haiti have an easy life, should spend a few nights at the IFRC base camp.

And compared to my co-workers I have it easy. Since I’m working for the IASC Shelter Cluster I get to work at the UN’s logistics base – and there’s aircon there. Most of my colleagues from the Red Cross Red Crescent have to work and endure the heat inside improvised offices inside an abandoned construction project. At least it helps us to understand better what the Haitian’s living in tent cities all over Port-au-Prince are going through. Though our living conditions are of course much, much better.

Shelter, shelter, shelter

My first week in the job was … interesting. Coordination by itself and shelter as a topic are incredibly complicated and since I’m now tasked with communicating (competently) about the aggregated work of all agencies doing Shelter in Haiti I am struggling with a steep learning curve. Shelter is simply connected with everything: land rights, livelihoods, disaster preparedness, tenure, debris removal – you name it, shelter is somewhere in the mix. And the topics of land rights in Haiti and debris removal by itself are already enough to drive you insane. But to be able to build shelters, the humanitarian community has to help the government to fix these issues. Which is why I suddenly found myself at a “presidential taskforce” – I even met the president.

It’s the small things

And then there is all the other things that make life interesting. Like traffic – which means that going to a meeting can take two hours – or the fact that I still don’t have an entry badge for the UN base because they ran out of ink. And apparently you can’t get ink (or that ink) in Haiti. Other surprising things: hearing the call to prayer at 4 am, being expected to know the streets of Port-au-Prince well enough to guide a driver, being considering the most capable French speaker on the team.

I also gave my first tv-interview in Haiti. Unfortunately it was on my second day and believe me when I’m saying that I was not comfortable speaking with an Al Jazeera journalist who has been here since January. But hey – it can only get better. And the most important thing is – I have extremely competent, experienced team members who I genuinely like. The rest will come.

No related posts.