The problem with many social media campaigns is that individual messages of support get lost and that the campaign never gathers enough momentum to go viral. Thunderclap is a service that helps you focus the voices of your supporters on a specific date. The UN is now using it to promote World Humanitarian Day (August 19).
This is a post in response to J.‘s “How would you make aid better?”: “Let’s imagine that you could make three changes to the state of things in the aid industry. (…) Just imagine that you could make three decisions or call for three changes and those changes would be followed through, applied across the industry.”
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.
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[...]
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.
I have been given the opportunity to return to Haiti for the next three months. I will be working as the communicator for the inter-agency “Shelter Cluster”. That will mean that for the immediate future this blog will be less about social media and primarily about my time in Haiti.
You’re an aid worker with 10+ years experience under your belt. You earn a pittance but it works for you because you are non-resident at home so you don’t pay tax, you are catered for on assignment so you don’t pay rent,and your mortgage is covered by the people renting your place because you are never there. Welcome to your future – these are your life options …
I find it surprising that there are not more good distance learning and e-learning programmes for aid workers and that the ones that exist are so hard to find. Here is a number of courses and programmes that I know of. Please leave a comment if you know of any others. In this list I am focusing on courses that offer specific skills for humanitarian aid workers and not on more general courses that can also be useful for people[...]
