Haiti Connect & NUI Galway hold Ireland’s first CrisisCamp!
Haiti Connect & NUI Galway hold Ireland’s first CrisisCamp!
NUI Galway’s Discipline of Information Technology will be hosting Ireland’s
first CrisisCamp on Sunday 26 February. It is being organised by Haiti
Connect, a charitable trust based in Co. Galway. CrisisCamps are a series of
global workshops organised by members of CrisisCommons a global community of
volunteers from academic, technology, crisis response organizations,
government agencies, and individuals that are working together to build and
use ICT technology tools to help respond to disasters and improve resiliency
and response before a crisis. The event organisers hope to create awareness
amongst crisis response organizations, academics, government agencies, and
citizens on how open source software & hardware can be used to build and use
technology tools to help respond to disasters and improve resiliency and
response before a crisis.
CrisisCamp began in March 2009 as an event to connect crisis management and
global development practitioners to the technology volunteer community.
During the Haiti response, CrisisCamp became a movement and added a response
mechanism to the community.
In 2010, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in partnership with the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars granted a planning grant and a
Trustee Grant to support the development of CrisisCommons to help curate a
new body of knowledge, document lessons learned from volunteer response and
to convene communities to support the growth of CrisisCamps at the local
level and the partnership capacity of CrisisCommons to provide
infrastructure and other resources to the CrisisCamp and other volunteer
technology communities.
Since 2009, CrisisCommons has coordinated crisis event responses such at the
Haiti, Chile and Japan Earthquakes and the floods in Thailand, Nashville and
Pakistan. Over 3,000 people have participated worldwide in over 30 cities
across 10 countries including France, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand,
Chile and Colombia
Haiti Connect has been running & supporting technology based aid &
rebuilding projects in Haiti since shortly after the earthquake of 2010.
Through direct experience they have seen the advantages of using modern,
digital technologies in these environments. “Through this event we hope to
create awareness amongst Irish crisis response organizations, government
agencies, and citizens on how open source software & hardware can be used to
build and use technology tools to help respond to disasters and improve
resiliency and response before a crisis.” Says Evert Bopp, founder of Haiti
Connect. “Working together with NUI Galway’s Discipline of Information
Technology was a logical choice when organising this event. People in
Information Technology and other disciplines in the College of Engineering
and Informatics are already engaged in both research and voluntary work in
support of crisis response. Through Crisiscamp we hope to bring together
people who are working on these challenges and inspire others to apply their
skills in this area”.
The event will take place in the Information Technology Building on the NUI
Galway campus February 26th from 10 am until 7 pm. Admission is free but
interested parties are encouraged to register via the website:
www.crisiscampireland.com
For more details please contact Mr. Evert Bopp on 086/8645099 or by email on
info@crisiscampireland.com
