Ushahidi

Ushahidi

            Volunteers came together to revolutionize humanitarian response and changed the way information can be gather and shared during a time of crisis or to document human rights violations. Similar to Wikipedia and its use of crowd sourcing users generate the information and can edit and change the information as they see fit.

 Ushahidi, which mean witness in Swahili, began in 2007 during the post election violence in Kenya. Main stream media was not reporting on human rights abuses and the people and outlets who were supposed to be sharing information were not. It began as a number people could text for free to report violations of human rights that they are seeing. Basically allowing users to tell the story of what is happening first hand. Ushahidi reconstructs an unfolding story by using information from users who text in, news stories, pictures and so on.

Smart phones and aps are making a system like this easier. People can take pictures right on their phone and upload them within seconds to Ushahidi. What I found interesting is that Ushahidi can basically be transformed to map whatever issue they are concerned with or for a purpose they are interested in.

Ushahidi played a large role in saving lives after the earthquake in Haiti. Originally the members at Ushahidi took information that people in Haiti and around the area had been posting on their Twitter and Facebook accounts to begin mapping. With an explosion of information they couldn’t keep up with all the mapping so they trained hundreds of people all over the place to help in the efforts. They could live skype with people on the scene to gain information, they also used Flickr and YouTube to map information as quickly as possible.

Ushahidi gained attention in the media and was even mentioned by Hilary Clinton. This gave them a good deal of publicity and information continued to poor in and the map continued to fill up with about 2000 different things mapped after only 3 weeks. The Marines and Coast Guard utilized Ushahidi and used it to decide where to deploy units. With 30% of individuals in Haiti having cell phone accessibility it was easy to communicate through text messaging. People could also receive a text back from Ushahidi, something that before was never capable from a crisis management organization.

Ushahidi

·         Based upon crowd sourcing and receiving information.

·         Smart phones have Aps that can be downloaded for Ushahidi

·         Ushahidi platform can be changed to map and monitor any issue or crisis.

·         Relies on volunteers and the desire to help others.

·         FEMA told them they were doing a great job and that they were saving lives.

·         Used by the Marines and Coast Guard.

·         People who wanted to help and do more than donate were finally able to do so.

·         Mapped several thousand messages and mapped them by most urgent, and help was sent where it was most desperately needed.

·         For the first time there was two way communication with those who need help and those who are providing it.

·         Can set it up to receive information from a selected, designated area when something happens there simply by getting a text from Ushahidi.

·         Improves real time and real space situational awareness.