With a room of eager volunteers, CrisisCamp NOLA packed the LaunchPad space during the last week in January in an

Tech Tools For Haiti Volunteers. Photo credit: @evacuteer

effort to work on tech tools for Haiti.  Before this event, CrisisCamp NOLA put out a call to local developers and non-developers to meet up for a day and come up with valuable resources that would benefit the overall case of Crisis Commons.

Organizers Sloane Berrent,  Robert Fogarty, and Barrett Conrad were excited about the turn out but more excited about what got accomplished that day.  “We had about 30 people come out and ten Haitian New Orleanians to participate in the event.  The group concentrated on national and local tools to help people going to Haiti and Haitians that might live in New Orleans" said Ms. Berrent.

On a national level, the team focused on creating a downloadable guide of information for anyone going to Haiti.  The guide includes airport codes, currency, medical translations from French to English, and Red Cross stations around Haiti.  On a local level, the group developed a website called NewOrleansHaiti.org, which is a one stop resource for Haitians in New Orleans to find out about who's providing services and where they can gather and come together.

Local Haitians Produce Videos For Loved Ones. Photo credit: @evacuteer

Robert Fogarty also coordinated with local video production company, The Del Tree, to produce a video message with local Haitians back to their brothers and sisters in Haiti.  Ray Nichols, a volunteer at the event said "My big take-away was that 60% of the approx. 4000 Haitians in the Greater New Orleans area are online.  They have also developed an organized approach to reaching the other 40%."

Rebekah Cain, local volunteer in the project said, "Overall, I found it very interesting and a wonderful way to harness the tech community around a disaster.  It's great to see non government organizations reaching out to the tech community, across the country, to utilize something like CrisisCamp to develop tools to enable the NGOs to increase efficiencies and be able to increase their impact."

With the foundation set on CrisisCamp NOLA, organizers have now placed the information into the hands of local Haitians  so they can update the site as needed.  For more information, check out the site at http://www.neworleanshaiti.org.  If anyone would like to help their cause, the group is looking to connect with any WordPress gurus who they can ask questions to from time to time.

See The Video: Dear Haiti, A Love Note

Dear Haiti, A Love Note from Deltree on Vimeo.