In a crisis environment, maintaining lines of communication is critically important. Ushahidi is deploying its open source platform that enables citizen reporting in crisis situations. A deadly earthquake struck Chile on February 27, 2010, cutting off many vulnerable people from traditional sources of information. Mozilla has awarded a $10,000 to enable Ushahidi volunteers to train Chilean civilians and government officials to utilize the Ushahidi platform during the relief effort.
Grant Summary
- 2010: $10,000
- Focus: Community
- Recipient: Ushahidi
- Location: United States and Chile
More Information
This grant will allowed Ushahidi volunteers to travel to Chile to provide training to Chilean citizens and government representatives. Deploying the Ushahidi platform allowed Chileans to gather on-the-ground reports of conditions in earthquake recovery zones. Ushahidi initially managed this project from its offices in the United States, but it became important to get the management of Ushahidi-Chile to the the geographical setting it served. In Ushahidi's announcement of the grant, Patrick Meier explained that "The majority of this grant will be instrumental in moving this initiative to the next phase: to Chile. We have been communicating with various Chilean organizations to transition the Ushahidi platform to local Chileans."
Ushahidi provided a full report of the activities related to this grant.
Ushahidi
Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, provides a free, open source platform that enables the collaboration of citizen journalists during a time of crisis. After successful use of this technology in Kenya, Gaza, and during the H1N1 Influenza outbreak, Ushahidi has developed goals of scaling the organization in order to make the tool as widely accessible as possible, to increase the platform’s user-friendliness, and to help support the community that has grown around Ushahidi.
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