Imagine disaster strikes, you find yourself in a situation where you cannot rely on routine impulses. Chaos is all around. The only thing you want is to find information and get hold of things. But how do you go about this? We believe victims in disaster areas are able to provide solutions to tackle their precarious situation themselves by working together with their community and international aid organizations that have experience with fighting disasters all over the world. We should bring together the local needs in a structured way so that international aid organizations can provide the help that is needed in every single aid situation with its specific needs and background. Moreover, when victims provide input and are listened to by the aid organization, they become more than victims, they receive an active role in reorganizing their community. Does a tool exist to facilitate this? We think there is!
Today, people all over the world communicate with different means of communication; face-to-face, by telephone, smartphone, over the Internet, using text messages, calling with Skype, … You name it! However, not all people have the same access to digital devices and, more importantly, what happens when disaster strikes and these devices start loosing battery power – and no general access to electricity to recharge?
Word of mouth can only reach as far as people or technology can go. Without electricity it is impossible to reach across city or country borders. When the roads are blocked, nearby communities become harder to reach. But information is the one thing that people need in order to feel reassured – or at least without doubts – about their own situation, and their family and closest friends’ conditions. In order to provide the information people need, we see it fit to arm victims themselves within different local communities with their own communication channels that are mobile in the broadest sense of the word and that give each individual the opportunity to bring across the message they believe most urgent and/or important. It provides people with effective means of communication and – more importantly – a way to organize themselves right after disaster strikes.
Here is how we plan to organize this communication: we envision people walking around as messengers by providing them with the necessary utensils. We think about using slider bags, including several pieces of paper and a pen, with attachment fittings. These bags are strong and waterproof, thus withstanding every disaster situation. The slider bags turn into messenger bags when disaster strikes, enabling locals to carry around messages they believe are important to them and the people around them. Messages can consist of words, full sentences, pictograms, symbols etc. Whenever possible, these messages can come about in collaboration with aid (or other) organizations. Through this, every citizen becomes a help provider and actively seeks to help or communicate with others around them.
We hear you think: Why write the messages down? Spoken words are volatile and get lost in the chaos, whereas written words stand their ground. Moreover, once something has been written down it can be used to create a structure that helps all stakeholders involved to work more efficiently. If possible, and we would give preference to this, these messenger bags should cooperate with a central communication center. There exist an array of tools to localize and centralize information that concerns everybody involved. However, this information cannot reach all victims. The slider bags serve also to spread information coming from a centralized organism that gathers all this necessary information. They are thus thought out to work in symbiosis with other available information. Consequently, centralized information channels can also work out messages for the messengers to carry around. This takes away the need for many people to walk around to seek information but, instead, receive the necessary information where they are. The centralized space thus cooperates with others that facilitate communication spreading.
Ideally, these bags are distributed before disaster strikes. In many cases, it is possible to localize emergency areas by following weather reports or keep them in stock in several local stands of different aid organizations. The distribution of the bags, however, should not be limited to international organizations and should also be made available to other partners, such as local NGO’s, church communities, local social/cultural organizations etc. Possibly, these local organizations should be given priority since they might be the organizations people turn to in case of emergency as they are perceived as trustworthy in everyday life.
For instance, the central administration point can provide information on which doctors are available and their location in the disaster area. Logically, if you need medical help you might not be in the proximity of the message board and thus benefit from the mobile messengers carrying around the information throughout the struck community.
At the same time, a doctor might be so busy with all his patients that it is not possible to provide the local administration with the necessary information; like his/her need for particular medicine or medical equipment. Thus, a local messenger can carry back the message from the local doctor to the central administration point.
Additionally, but we conceive of this as a positive side effect, locals will be photographed or filmed by international press with their own messages that go beyond ‘we need help’ so that around the world everybody knows what the exact aid needs are.
To sum up:
• We aim to make use of the experience and knowledge of both locals and international aid providers in the best possible way. This way we can avoid people being victimized and empower them instead.
• We wish to include the people that live in more remote areas and are thus more vulnerable since it is more difficult to reach them.
• It provides information to the digital illiterate and surpasses problems when electricity is out.