Earthquake in Haiti: How You can Help and Learn More

Posted by PrabhasPokharel on Jan 13, 2010

Relief efforts are ongoing after a powerful 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti yesterday. Mobile phones play a huge part in relief efforts today, from supporting donations, citizen media coming from affected areas, to emergency relief coordination. Here are some links and information you might find useful in responding to and learning more about the Haiti earthquakes.  

Mobile Donations

[This section last updated 01/15/2010 12:59 pm]

Text message donations are exploding in the aftermath of the earthquake, similar to what happened in 2004 after the Indonesian Tsunami. $9 million has already been donated by noon on Friday January 15 just to the Red Cross via the 90999 number.

A list of all short codes to text to to donate on your phone bill in the United States:

  • Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross for Haiti efforts. You can donate $10 up to three times, and 100% of the donations will reach the Red Cross Foundation. This effort is run by Mobile Accord.
  • Text YELE to 501501 to donate $5 to the Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation. 501501 is run by Give On the Go, a service provider for the Mobile Giving Foundation. Ashley Nay, who is in Business Development at Give On the Go told MobileActive on the phone that "100% of the donations go to YELE" from these donations.
  • Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee.
  • Text RELIEF to 30644 to get automatically connected to Catholic Relief Services and donate money with your credit card.
  • Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation.
  • Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International. 
  • Text HAITI to 85944 to donate $5 to the Rescue Union Mission and MedCorp International.

A list of all the non-US short codes that we know are serving as donation lines.

  • Germany: text HAITI to 81190 to donate $5 (out of which $4.83 will go to Aktion Deutschland Hilft).
  • Denmark: text Katastrofe to 1231 to donate 150 kr, or call 90 56 56 56. 
  • Canada: text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army, again courtesy of the Mobile Giving Foundation.
  • Italy: text to 48540 to donate to the Italian Red Cross if you are on the WIND or 3 networks. If you are on Vodacom or TIM, text 48451 to donate EUR 2 (Telecom Italia users can also call this number). (Read More)
  • France: 80 222/Croix Rouge française, 80 333/Secours Populaire, et 80 444/Secours Catholique. One euro per SMS. (From a user)
  • Mexico: Telcel users can text 8888, donations will go to the Carlos Slim Foundation (Thanks @sorrelkydd)

More organizations that are working in Haiti in relief efforts are listed on  The NYTimes Lede Blog and more on MSNBC's How to Help page.

Ongoing Communications Efforts

[Update, as of 01/15/2010, ~1:30pm]

  • A good source for ongoing communication information is the Ushahidi Situation Room. We reported about the Ushahidi map for Haiti (Ushahidi is a mapping platform for crowdsourced crisis information) earlier, and it is being actively updated by the situation room setup at Tufts' Fletcher School. The Ushahidi blog also lists many of the other map-based information collection systems that have been set up.
  • This morning, Erik Hersman posted a mobile network update (01/15/2010, 10:03am) on the Situation Room page saying "Digicel is at 50% Voila & Haitel at 75%." USA Today reported yesterday that Jamaica-based Digicel has had problems getting themselves into Haiti, and that "the network is severely congested 'because of the number of people making calls and trying to receive calls.'"
  • A story on MSNBC from yesterday details some of TSF's work in Haiti. From the article:

Telecoms Sans Frontieres is hooking up terminals to facilitate communications for U.N. relief workers in Haiti, and will eventually let Haitians make free two-minute phone calls to anywhere in the world. The group's U.S. representative, Paul Margie, said the biggest challenge isn't technology but security. "The security and logistics situation on the ground is pretty bad, so finding secure locations to do these things is hard," he told me.

[Following was the section as it was posted the day after the earthquake, 01/13/2010, ~1:00pm]

  • We are hearing that Digicel, one of the main mobile operators, is intermittently working as of right now, and satellite telephone services has allowed many first-responders and witnesses to report via skype on the devastation in Haiti. Digicel has also committed $5 million for relief efforts. [WSJ]
  • Telecoms Sans Frontiers is deploying a team for support with emergency telecoms.  You can donate to their efforts at this page. From the article:

Port-au-Prince has been severely affected including critical services such as, electricity, water and phone lines. Communication appears to be almost impossible at this time, with phone lines down. Numerous buildings, including the United Nations building, are reported to have been seriously damaged.

Facing this humanitarian catastrophe, TSF has deployed an emergency team from the American base in Managua to provide a vital support in emergency telecoms. They are carrying satellite mobile and fixed telecommunications tools. Reinforcements will also be sent from TSF’s international Headquarters. In close contact with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO), they are now flying to Saint-Domingue in order to rejoin Port-au-Prince as soon as possible.

At this stage there is very limited access because of debris and other obstacles on the roads. It seems that no communication can be made with the airport either, which is reported to be closed.

  • The Crisis Commons wiki is documenting some of the News, Data, and Communications efforts. In particular, they report about two mobile communication service efforts (they seek confirmation whether these are working yet): 

Information from the Ground  

Twitter Lists   

Twitter lists have become a quick-fire way to organize and aggregate  information related to events and topics. Quite a few twitter lists have  been set up by several news organizations after the Haiti  earthquake. Here is a sample:  

The twitter hashtag #haiti and a  search for haiti on twitter yield lots of info.   

US State Department/American Citizens  

Barack Obama in speech to Americans this morning listed  several ways in which the US government is trying to help relief  efforts in Haiti:  

  • Americans seeking info on family in Haiti should call  1-800-407-4747  
  • Updates from the White House's efforts will be put on  The White House Blog. From the Department of State, updates are coming on the official twitter-verified DipNote.
  • DipNote also says: Americans in Haiti can call the Embassy’s Consular Task Force at 509-2229-8942, 509-2229-8089, 509-2229-8322, or 509-2229-8672.   

Live Blogs / Other semi-live coverage  

Many blogs are covering the happenings live, and incorporating photos  and videos coming in from citizen reporters in Haiti:

  • Reuters has a page offering live coverage of events. Includes picture reports coming in through twitter, as well as News from other sources.
  • CNN iReport, a citizen journalism effort, is aggregating citizen-submitted videos and photos on this page.
  • The Lede Blog at the New York Times has ongoing coverage.
  • NPR also has ongoing coverage on its Two Way blog.
  • The Guardian also has liveblogging efforts.

(More here). Compiling citizen voices in Haiti are on this Global Voices Online page, to be updated as more content comes in.

YouTube

Youtube's search on earthquake Haiti yields many videos, and there are some dedicated channels and playlists on the cause like this one from CitizenTube.

References for Relief efforts

We have also compiled some references for those interested in reading more about previous relief efforts and resources that might help organizations running relief efforts:

If you are aware of other efforts or updates, please leave a comment. 

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Earthquake in Haiti: How You can Help and Learn More data sheet 11318 Views
Countries: Haiti

Donate and Inform #Haiti "under one roof"

On the day of the crisis, we wanted to help immediately. Hence www.haitiearthquake.tel was born from a regional initiate. The site has it all "under one roof" and helped people around the world to get the latest information, and donate easily from their phone: sms-to-donate.

www.haitiearthquake.tel is the only internet web site that direct donors to their local charity agency for donation and accessible from any pc or mobile.

Our hope is to get the word out, keep people informed and aware of the disaster, add more local initiate to help haiti and donate more to Haiti.

Please help us to keep donation going to Haiti.

Many thanks,

@tel4rent

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