Making Social Media Do Good March 28, 2011
Posted by Karen E. Lund in Emergency Preparedness, Humanizing Technology, Internet, Knowledge, Mobile, Non-Profit, Social Media, Volunteer.Tags: #UsBlogs, Collaboration, Communication, Disaster, Emergency Preparedness, Humanizing Technology, Internet, Knowledge, Mobile, Non-Profit, Social Media, Volunteer
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Last month I attended Social Media Week New York. As most of my career has been spent in non-profits, I registered for panels on non-profits, international development, and using social media for social good. There was a good deal of discussion about events happening in the Middle East, and opinions were divided on how much (or how little) social media like Facebook and Twitter were influencing the democracy movements.
Friday around noon I returned from an early lunch break for a panel discussion. Every venue (that I know of) had wi-fi, so after finding a good seat I cracked open my laptop to check e-mail and Twitter. Twitter was alive! Reports that Hosni Mubarak had resigned were lighting up my timeline, so I switched briefly to my News list, which was also crazy. But this is a new medium, and the contradictory reports of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in January had shown me that misinformation can propagate just as easily as reliable information. So I quickly looked at the websites of the New York Times, the BBC, and Al Jazeera English. All of them reported Mubarak’s resignation, so I accepted it as true.
Double Check Your Facts. Then Triple Check.
Social media accelerates the flow of information, both good and bad. Rumor and misinformation can spread just as rapidly as accurate news, so confirm what you read against other sources. That first report you read may be true—it may even be a scoop, in which case you won’t find confirmation for a while—but unless you are an eye-witness or know the source to be extremely trustworthy, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
What Social Media Can Do
Before this sounds too negative, I need to say: social media has enormous potential to do good. But like any tool, it’s all in how you use it. Here are a few thoughts on how to make social media do good:
- Stay informed. Develop a trusted network of individuals and organizations that you can rely on in a time of need—or any time. Discover who provides reliable information about topics that interest you (social good or otherwise) and can both keep you up-to-date on current news and be a fact-checking resource when you need one.
- Share. Contribute to the conversation, share what you know from your offline experience, and forward information you glean from your network. When sharing, always double-check before you forward or retweet; be sure that what you share is relevant, useful and that the links work.
- Choose your subject. Nobody can do everything, so focus your attention on a subject that interests you and/or a particular skill you have to offer. By all means stay informed about everything that interests you, but if you’re going to delve deeper, narrow your focus to be most effective.
- Use the best available technology. One of the greatest things about technology is that it gives us so many channels to communicate. Sometimes the difficult part is deciding which to use. In emergency situations, such as the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear hazard in Japan, some forms of communication may be unavailable, so you may not have access to the very best channel—but choose the most appropriate from among those you do have.
- Get involved. Opportunities to do good may be virtual, or you may want to carry your helping into your offline life. Use online sources to be informed, then connect via social media and carry your good deeds forward.
- Collaborate. The thing about social media is it’s… well, social. One person acting in isolation isn’t social, nor a network. You’ll have much more impact in whatever you do if you collaborate with like-minded folks online. So before you rush off to reinvent the wheel, check out what others are doing; then join up with an existing network that matches your own ideals, or start your own project knowing exactly which gap you’re filling.
- Inform your friends, but don’t push. Just because someone likes you doesn’t mean they are passionate about everything that you are—or that they have the time, money or energy to contribute. Let your friends know what you’re interested in, but keep the requests for help low-key; those who want to participate will, especially if they know you’re the person to contact if they want to do more.
Social Media in Times of Crisis—One Example with a Happy Ending
If you have any doubt that social media can do good, watch this CNN report about how Akiko Kosaka, a young Japanese woman attending college in the US, learned on YouTube (YouTube!) that her family had survived the recent earthquake and tsunami. It demonstrates better than I can the ability of communications technology to connect people in time of need.
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Answering “What If?” March 7, 2011
Posted by Karen E. Lund in Emergency Preparedness.Tags: #UsBlogs, Disaster, Emergency Preparedness, Red Cross
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Unanswered questions are scary. That’s what I scrawled in my blog notebook back in October after I gave a Ready New York presentation in Brooklyn, not far from where a tornado had touched down a few days earlier. Tornadoes are rare in this part of the country, but every couple of years we have a small one. Or, in this case, two—one in Brooklyn and another in Queens.
Someone at the presentation had said she knew emergency preparedness is important, but thinking about possible emergencies scared her. I can’t help but agree. Sometimes watching the news is scary, but I believe that the only way to take the fear out of “What if?” is to answer it-and then do whatever is necessary to be ready if “What if?” happens.
When I became an American Red Cross volunteer I started to think seriously about emergency preparedness; now I give presentations to help others prepare. I even gave a presentation the night of the tornadoes—and believe me, I’ve rarely had a more attentive audience! The funny thing is, the more I think about hazards, the less frightening they become.
As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” The most frightening things that have happened to me came out of the blue, and by the time I realized what had happened it was too late to be afraid. It was over and I was alive: take it from there. They were not things I could have anticipated ahead of time, but they were things I could be prepared for, at least partially, by taking standard precautions.
Those tornadoes in September, for example. At the beginning of the month hurricane Earl was approaching the northeast. The Red Cross and other agencies urged people to prepare. But Earl stayed over the Atlantic and lost power to the cooler northern waters. By the time it finally reached land in Canada, it was no big deal. And then a few weeks later New York City was struck by two tornadoes. Ah, but if you’d given thought to preparing for the hurricane, you were well prepared for the twisters.
All Hazards & “What If?”
Emergency managers sometimes talk about an “all-hazards approach.” While it can become quite technical at the professional level, the application at the individual and household level is pretty simple: you don’t need a dozen plans for different kinds of emergencies, you really just need two. Your options in an emergency come down to deciding whether you are safe where you are and need to hunker down until the crisis is over, or whether you are unsafe and need to evacuate to another location. Have a broad plan for each of those possibilities, then tweak your plans slightly for different kinds of emergencies. For example, you might consider staying at a friend’s home if your own home was damaged by fire, but if that friend lives near the coast it wouldn’t be a good place to go in a hurricane or other major storm. But you’d still take the same supplies for your family while you’re away from home.
Here’s where asking “What if?” can help you prepare. When you hear about a disaster somewhere in the world, maybe something scary that gets a lot of media attention, ask yourself what you’d do if something similar happened near you. (Don’t worry; the worst case probably won’t happen to you. This is a thought experiment.) But here’s the catch: you have to answer the “What if?” question. If you don’t answer the question, you only create anxiety, but you don’t adjust your plan. Answer the question and adjust your plan, your Go Bag, and your at-home supplies accordingly.
What Am I Afraid Of?
I doubt that #UsGuys made topic of the #UsBlogs project “What Are You Afraid Of? (And what are you doing about it?)” on the first weekend of American Red Cross Month on purpose. But it sure fits!
So I’ve asked myself what I’m afraid of, and the answer is that I can’t really think of anything. There are a many things that concern me, even a few that worry me, but when I lie awake at night preoccupied by something it’s because I’m making plans, not because I’m fretting.
Lennon was right: I’ve worried about possibilities that never happened, while the worst things I’ve seen were completely unexpected. The blade at my throat. September 11, 2001. The other one I don’t talk about. Let’s just say that at the age of 25 I understood, deep in my gut, that everyone dies and some day it would happen to me. Once I accepted that, nothing much is scary.
Google Maps – Save a Life Saturday, March 19
As it is Red Cross Month and we’re blogging about what scares us, let’s talk about preparedness. On March 19 more than 100 Red Cross chapters will offer classes in hands-only CPR—and they’re free! It’s the Gabrielle Giffords Honorary Save-a-Life Saturday, and it’s the first time the Red Cross has offered free CPR training on such a large scale. The list is too long to post, but participating chapters can be found on the map below.
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My Proudest Moment March 3, 2011
Posted by Karen E. Lund in Emergency Preparedness, Knowledge, Learning, Non-Profit, Volunteer.Tags: Collaboration, Disaster, Emergency Preparedness, Knowledge, Learning, Non-Profit, Red Cross, Volunteer
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In case you didn’t know, March is American Red Cross Month, as it has been every year since 1943.
On March 1 the Cape Fear Chapter tweeted an intriguing question: “What is your favorite experience with the Red Cross?” After almost nine and a half years, it’s difficult to think about a favorite experience. Perhaps handing out hot chocolate at the Brooklyn Bridge on the last day of the 2005 New York City transit strike. We’d just heard that the strike was over and transit would be running again the next morning, so it took on a party atmosphere. It was cold that evening, but the hot chocolate and the end of the strike made it better. Then a young woman came down the ramp from the Bridge, cell phone clasped to her ear, and squealed into the phone, “It’s the Red Cross… and they have hot chocolate!!!” (We don’t always get such immediate gratification on the larger disasters.)
The thing I can tell you without hesitation is my proudest moment in the American Red Cross. But I need to tell you a little background information first.
The old Brooklyn Chapter building was the headquarters for the World Trade Center disaster response. It has since been rebuilt as the headquarters of NYC's Office of Emergency Management.
I became an American Red Cross volunteer on October 5, 2001, as a Local Disaster Volunteer on the September 11 response. It was a little more than three weeks after the terrorist attacks—looking back it seems quite early, but in reality a lot had happened, and I was brand-new to the organization and had never done any kind of disaster relief work before. I somewhat famously told a woman in the Staffing function that I would “do it for three days and see how it goes.” I have to say it went pretty well: almost two months later I was hired to work full-time on the disaster, then transitioned to the September 11 Recovery Program (SRP) and stayed until October 2004. Three days became three years, and less than a month after leaving SRP I started volunteering with the Greater New York chapter.
At first I did miscellaneous office help. Then, when I got a new job, I looked for volunteer activities that I could schedule around work. First I got involved with Community Outreach, giving presentations on emergency preparedness to organizations around the city. It made sense that after cutting my teeth on the largest disaster relief operation in the history of the American Red Cross I would tell people how to prepare. (Fortunately most emergencies the Red Cross deals with are much less devastating and a little preparedness can go a long way to making recovery easier for the people affected.)
Then in early August 2005 I received an e-mail about new training available for a national disaster call center. About a dozen chapters around the country, including Greater New York, would be able to tie in if there was a large-scale disaster that required ramping up capacity. Four training dates were offered; I signed up for the evening of August 29.
Almost exactly 12 hours before the class, Hurricane Katrina made landfall. I was getting dressed for work and listening to the news on the radio. I remember thinking, “This training might get put to use pretty soon.” Indeed, the class was filled to capacity and as soon as it was over we began signing up for shifts. I signed up for some evenings after work and one day per weekend.
On the evening of September 7 I arrived from work to find Ian, one of my former SRP colleagues, volunteering at the call center. There was an unoccupied work station next to him, so I grabbed it. Ian and I barely had time to smile a hello at each other; there were hundreds of calls waiting in the queue for the next available call agent.
After a few calls I took a quick breather. That had become my habit: lots of short breaks—not even five minutes sometimes—to rest my voice, take a sip of water or suck on a throat lozenge, and clear my mind for the next call. Refresh the database (which was constantly being updated by a team at national headquarters) and dive in again.
I turned to see if Ian was still sitting next to me. What I saw almost took my breath away. On the other side of Ian were two other September 11 Recovery Program veterans, Amanda and Frank. I did a quick estimate. Among the four of us we had at least 12 years’ experience working for the Red Cross on the largest disaster relief operation in this country’s history.
When I got home that night I e-mailed Amanda, Ian and Frank:
When I turned to my right this evening and saw the three of you lined up at the adjacent workstations, it felt like old times…. and I don’t mean the dreaded “here we go again” feeling, although I’ve had that a few times in the past ten days.
[A]mong the four of us we have over a dozen years’ experience in ARC. That’s pretty darned impressive! And very reassuring as we face another major disaster that could surpass the records the September 11 operation set.
You’re all terrific, and it was a privilege to work along side you again.
This is what I love about the Red Cross. Not only the people, who are almost universally terrific, but the experience. The American Red Cross is one of the oldest non-profit organizations in the United States; this year it is 130 years old. Much has changed in that time, and ARC has changed a good deal in response, but what hasn’t changed is the enormous institutional memory.
I’ve sometimes been asked if working in Disaster Services was depressing. It almost never was. Actual disasters are the last thing I think about—I think about preparedness in advance and response after emergencies; that’s where we can do some good. In between it’s battening the hatches and riding out the storm (actual or metaphorical). Then the Red Cross springs to action again. And again. And again. Since Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross in 1881, we’ve been responding to emergencies and learning for the next one, and we’re not done yet.
ICT on the Global Stage: Part 2 – Haiti January 13, 2011
Posted by Karen E. Lund in Emergency Preparedness, Internet, Mobile.add a comment
While Google and China were wrestling over issues of free speech, censorship, intellectual property, global communications technology, and e-commerce, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere suffered a terrible blow: a magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti near its capital, Port-au-Prince. The city, planned to house about 400,000 to 500,000 people, held approximately 3.5 million prior to the earthquake. Many lived and worked in substandard, often unsafe, buildings. Unreinforced concrete structures crumbled, other buildings collapsed, and over 200,000 people died. (More have died since due to a hurricane and cholera outbreak later in the year.)
With an adult illiteracy rate of close to 40% and inadequate infrastructure, censorship of Google searches is not an issue in Haiti. Text messages are about as much as most people have access to or have a need for. Following the earthquake, those who had a mobile phone had great need for text messaging and voice communication.
Fred W. Baker III via Wikimedia Commons
In February and March I volunteered for three shifts at a multi-agency resource center in Brooklyn for those affected by the earthquake in Haiti. Supposedly the American Red Cross volunteers were there to assist people in looking for family members on the Red Cross Family Links database, but by my first shift most people knew where their relatives were. What those family and friends in Haiti didn’t know was where they could go to get food, shelter, medical care, or other help.
These were not high-level discussions between corporate officers and government officials. The route to information here was simple, almost low-tech in some ways. Someone in Haiti called or sent a text message to a friend or relative in New York City. That person came to our resource center and visited various agencies to try to obtain help, or at least information. At our table, we looked up information about on-the-ground assistance in Haiti. (Yes, we used Google quite a lot.) A few days earlier another volunteer had discovered an online map of World Food Program (WFP) feeding sites. We downloaded a newer version, asked the Office of Emergency Management to print it for us (we had laptops but no printer), and someone from another agency found a photocopier to make more copies.
We would speak with Haitian visitors about what their friends needed and where they were. Often we went to the large-scale paper map on a table in the center of the room to locate a place as precisely as possible. Then we would consult the WFP map and other information. We always cautioned visitors that things in Haiti changed often; what we had online might not be completely accurate, but we could offer some idea about which agencies were providing assistance in particular locations. “Tell your friend,” we said, “that if they have an opportunity to speak with anyone from one of the reliable relief agencies they should ask about the help they need.”
In once particular case a young woman was trying to help her cousin’s family, who had evacuated to a rural area outside Port-au-Prince. They were equidistant between two mid-size towns. Looking at the WFP map it was clear that one town had many more agencies working there than in the other, so we advised her to have her cousin go to the first town. It wasn’t much, but we felt we’d helped direct the cousin’s family to the place where they were more likely to find help. Travel was difficult and possibly dangerous; we’d saved them wasted time and effort.
Of course it’s not enough. The problems in Haiti were tremendous even before the earthquake, the result of decades of poverty and poor governance, inadequate building standards, overcrowding, and years of natural disaster (most often hurricanes and tropical storms) that seem to tear down improvements as soon as they are made. Progress has been too little, too slow, too disorganized. In particular the rebuilding of homes is far behind what it needs to be. There are some legitimate reasons for this (the enormous amount of rubble to be cleared and the difficulty in determining who owns some of the land), but the pace still needs to pick up in order to meet basic human needs.
One of the good things I’ve seen is that disaster relief has not had to rely on the major media; people with simple ICT tools are combining their effort to identify needs and provide aid. Another is the Haitian people’s use of simple text and voice communication to navigate the chaos of the past year.
On the subject of Haiti’s recovery from the devastation of last year’s earthquake, I will leave you with the trailer to what looks like a fascinating film. Please feel free to share any thoughts or links to informative media in the comments below.
