2016 ICT4D Conference

Inspired by volunteer responder communities including Standby Task Force and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, ICT workers responding to the EU refugee crisis established simple, public, and completely open communications tools for cross organization coordination.

Using simple, publically available, and free-to-use tools, crisis responders on the Greek island of Lesbos established live chat rooms, and shared cloud-based document folders, to coordinate the establishment and maintenance of Wifi networks on the island. Groups who had never before met or collaborated were able to support each other with know-how, on-the-ground labor, equipment, and even funding.

These open spaces quickly filled with responders-professional NGO and corporate, and volunteers, working on the crisis throughout the refugee route and beyond.

What began as a lightweight coordination tool, quickly became a robust discussion and meet-up space that spawned several collaborative ICT projects including the RefugeeInfo web site for refugees, the Translation Cards mobile app for responders, and coordinated deploy and management of informational video displays throughout registration centers and border crossings.

Come hear how radical openness enabled IRC, Google, Mercy Corps, UNHCR, Cisco, NetHope, Disaster Tech Lab, Oxfam, SOS Children's VIllages, Save the Children, NRC and others to support one another's initiatives and come together to launch new programs in the midst of an emergency response.

The session will take the form of case studies presented by a panel of collaborators, followed by hands-on training on the key open-communications tools used in the response: Slack, Slack-in, Google Drive, and WhatsApp.