As the tragedy in Haiti struck, I was overcome with two reactions. One was a desire to help. The other was a fear of being more of a burden than a help.
I had a week of vacation the week Hurricane Katrina struck, and had discussed going down at the time. After an hour of hard thinking with close friends (on the porch of our house) we decided that the government and NGO crews had the skills to handle the job, and we would simply be in the way. In the aftermath that followed Katrina I realized how wrong I was.
To this day, I regret not going down, and simply giving a hand where necessary. So over the last weeks, I’ve been digging up information on the web, helping friends find information or volunteer opportunities, and doing some small things to help organize back-end data to support people I know who are going down to Haiti.
My second reaction was to consider how we prevent and prepare for this family of failure again. This is perhaps the engineer and scientist in me, or the part of me that leads me to those interest. I am useful as a manual labor, and could contribute quickly and easily on the ground in a lot of situations, but that is only part of what I do. I would like to be able to contribute my skill set, both in software/hardware and in organizing people and managing situations.
So after some searching, I found somewhere that I could use my skills to help. Télécoms Sans Frontière (TSF) is the geeks version of Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors Without Borders). They provide on-site help in emergency situations with getting infrastructure back online, running, and getting people connected to the world of information they need to solve on the ground problems. I am submitting a Resume and cover letter to be a volunteer now, and I encourage others to do the same. For people to solve complicated problems, they need access to the best information. If you are a geek, I think this is the best way to get involved, and use your skills to save lives. It would be amazing if we could get an entire crew of Philadelphia geeks ready to head out the next time a catastrophe happens.