Mission 4636

An Haiti? apporter un incident: Centre d’appel : 177 or 3753-8500. Par SMS : 177. En Ligne : http://www.noula.ht/

In the wake of the January 12th, 2010 earthquake in Haiti a free phone number (4636) was established to meet the urgent needs of the Haitian people through SMS messaging. This allowed people on the ground to text their requests for medical care, food, water, security and shelter from any Digicel / Comcel-Voila device and receive aid.

Through the “Mission 4636″ service 80,000 messages were received from people within Haiti, predominantly in Haitian Kreyol. Tireless workers and volunteers translated, geolocated and categorized the messages via online crowdsourcing platforms which sorted the information by need and priority, and distributed it to various emergency responders and aid organizations. Initially, the focus was on search and rescue, but the service scaled up about one week after the earthquake to include a wide range of responses, including serious injuries, requests for fresh drinking water, security, unaccompanied children and clusters of requests for food, and even childbirths.

The service was able to direct emergency response teams to save hundreds of people, and direct the first food, water and medicine to tens of thousands. Through our combined efforts, Mission 4636 has become a sustainable part of the rebuilding process as we have shifted from a volunteer effort to paid workers within Haiti – workers in Mirebalais share their thoughts:

For more information about the workers in Haiti, you can read interviews at:
http://blog.samasource.org/interviewing-the-workers-of-1000-jobshaiti/
and the most recent training sessions by Eric Nguyen and Alex Onsager at:
http://blog.samasource.org/rebuilding-haiti-samasources-part/