PAP Outskirts Food Relief

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  • Status: Active (Phase 4)
  • Project lead: Michael Caudy ; mcaudy at gmail.com
  • Goal: There are reports of large groups of people on the outskirts of PAP and surroundings, who have still received little or no food relief. This is now the focus of this project, and will remain a major focus for the next days and weeks while we work urgently to identify these groups, verify that they still critically need food, and set up specific cases with procedures for following each case through to completion, for example using a CaseTracker feature which we are now developing.

There are reports now of documented deaths due to starvation, so it is absolutely critical to get food immediately to these and other starving groups of people.

  • Our project, the Haiti Earthquake Information Project is a set of web-based communication and information exchange tools, built on the Drupal CMS. One of the web search tools that we have developed to rapidly identify groups who still need aid is this Drupal-based feed for an automatically updated Twitter search using the #haiti #need search hashtags:

Twitter feed #hait #need search with casetracker: http://dev.haiti-earthquake-information.org/feeds/11 Note: the CaseTracker feature is not yet fully functional, so please don't use it, the but Twitter search feed is working and can be used as one way to identify groups that may still be in urgent need of food relief. For example: one group that our Twitter searches has revealed, and which appeared to urgently need assistance is this large group at Villa Manrese:

Villa Manrese: There are 1000+ people who have been camping in the garden at Villa Manrese, on the southern perimeter of Port au Prince. According to the Ushahidi report for this case, as January 31, these people had received essentially no food relief since the January 12 earthquake

Here is the Ushahidi report for this group: http://haiti.ushahidi.com/reports/view/2012

Over the past several days, there have been effort to establish direct contact with the World Food Programme, and then via the WFP, to contact with the specific NGO on the ground working in PAP and the surrounding areas. Once a verified case has been submitted to the WFP, it can be authorized for emergency food delivery, and forwarded to the appropriate NGO.

There are similar reports of many more large groups of people on the outskirts of PAP and surroundings, who have still received no food relief. These need to be identified, and ongoing need must be verified, so that we can submit these cases to the WFP.

This is now the focus of this project, and will remain a major focus for the next days and weeks while we work to identify these groups, verify that they still critically need food, and set up specific cases with procedures for following each case through to completion, at first by e-mail communications with the WFP, and later using the CaseTracker feature.

Brief Overview of the Past and Current Phases of this Project: we are now entering a fourth phase in the project:

  • The first phase (Days 1 to Day 5) involved rapid app development to create a working app / demo to show others. We now have two different versions of the Drupal app for Twitter #haiti #need search feeds (best viewed in Firefox; note that the CaseTracker feature needs further development):
  • The second phase (week 2) involved coordination / cooperation / collaboration with other software developers such as the Ushahidi and CrisisCommons groups, with whom we are now collaborating.
  • The third phase (week 2/3) involved getting contacts / information on the ground in Haiti, and establishing direct contacts with the World Food Programme and specific NGOs on the ground.
  • The third phase aim is to getting aid to the 1000+ people at Villa Manrese, in order to take this case to completion. We now have an established procedure and contacts that we can use to help identify and verify more groups who have received no food aid, and then get the WFP to authorize food delivery, which is then delivered by the specific NGO working in that area.
  • The fourth phase (starting today, Saturday, Feb. 6) will involve further web software development, as well as new aspects of the project.

These new aspects include: outreach to the Haitian community to try to identify groups in Haiti who still have not received food aid. These groups are now mostly on the outskirts of Port au Prince, but there still may be groups throughout PAP who have not received aid, due to lack of communication.

One immediate goal is to obtain information / contacts on the ground in Haiti, in order to identify and verify groups of people still in need of food relief.

Last week we established contact with two people - Chi Chi Valenti and her brother, David Baron - who have direct cell phone contact with people on the ground in Villa Manrese. They provided the information and created the original Ushahidi report, and on Thursday reconfirmed with people at Villa Manrese that there still has been effectively no food relief within that Camp. That led to our being able to verify that case, so that we could go to the WFP to get food assistance approved and initiated. That case has now also been listed as "Verified" on the Ushahidi report, whereas it was no verified before.

Chi Chi has also been communicating with others on Facebook since the earthquake, and she recently set up a Facebook page describing our project and how others can work with us to help these groups of starving people in Haiti. For example, she has found through a contact she knows in Haiti that there is another large group, of about 500 people, who have been camped in a parking lot at the Cercle Bellevue Club. This group also has had essentially no food relief since the Jan. 12 earthquake. That contact has visited that camp again, and confirmed that there still has been no food relief, so that case has been verified and submitted to the WFP for authorization for immediate food delivery.

Chi Chi's Facebook page for this project is below (note that you have to join this Facebook group in order to see this Facebook Discussion.)

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Dr. Michael Caudy Director: Haiti Earthquake Information Project 

  http://haiti-earthquake-information.org/

Here is the link to the Crisis Commons project page for our project for getting food to large groups of starving people on the outskirts of PAP: 

 http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/PAP_Outskirts_Food_Relief

Facebook page describing how people can help with this project: 

 http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=252988675717&topic=18270

Here are the links to software tools we have developed for this project:

  1. need #have data mashup: 
 http://dev.haiti-earthquake-information.org/en/need-have-offer
  1. need only search with casetracker: 
 http://dev.haiti-earthquake-information.org/feeds/11

Cell: 917 435-3624 Home: 718 884-1342 mcaudy@gmail.com

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