Desperate families were brought to their knees after the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti in January. Not only did the disaster kill 230,000 people, it crippled the infrastructure – and brought forth one of the largest humanitarian needs of recent times.
Aidmatrix helped humanitarian organizations relieve some of this suffering, connecting established relief organizations with supplies and transportation to reach families in tremendous need.
Humanitarian organization World Concern used Aidmatrix to coordinate transportation and donated goods to help people in Haiti. With a 30-year presence in Haiti, World Concern already had established channels to distribute aid, but needed more resources to deliver.
“The whole thing was miraculous,” said Susan Talbot, Gift-In-Kind manager for World Concern. “It’s a service that is desperately needed.”
Talbot immediately posted requests on Aidmatrix after the earthquake hit. She also watched postings from donors of goods and services. World Concern made several connections on the website, for donated medical equipment, soccer balls – and a donated use of a private plane and pilot to fly the president of the organization in to help direct the response.
“I logged in every day to see what was available,” said Talbot. “Our organization received a variety of valuable donated products from USAID’s Aidmatrix Donations Management portal.
World Concern estimates they received $31,441 in value of donated goods and services sourced through Aidmatrix. It allowed a more substantial response – in a time of critical need. The humanitarian value on the ground, though, kept Talbot engaged – knowing that it was making a real difference in the lives of those affected.
“I loved making these connections,” said Talbot. “At one point my manager said he was going to take my laptop away from me because I was so addicted.”
-Story courtesy of World Concern
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Aidmatrix Participates in Exercise 24
Friday, I participated in Exercise 24. Exercise 24 is an international collaborative multidisciplinary exploration of communication, logistics coordination, and response to a seismic event that generates an off shore oil spill, displaced communities requiring shelter, and damage to critical infrastructure inland. The event has significant involvement from the military, with additional participation from the private sector, emergency management, nonprofit and academic organizations. University of California San Diego provided the facilities and other event logistics support.
Over a few days, Exercise24 tested and explored solutions to emergency response, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief challenges associated a major earthquake within the San Andreas Fault System. I was able to assess leading edge and experimental technologies. From the nonprofit sector, InRelief.org provided much of the infrastructure, while INSTEDD.org had some of the most compelling chat and SMS capabilities. At the appropriate times, Aidmatrix leveraged Social Media tools to simulate communications around an activation of different components of The Aidmatrix Network.
The images below are not real. They were part of Exercise 24.
Keith Thode
Chief Operating Officer
Over a few days, Exercise24 tested and explored solutions to emergency response, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief challenges associated a major earthquake within the San Andreas Fault System. I was able to assess leading edge and experimental technologies. From the nonprofit sector, InRelief.org provided much of the infrastructure, while INSTEDD.org had some of the most compelling chat and SMS capabilities. At the appropriate times, Aidmatrix leveraged Social Media tools to simulate communications around an activation of different components of The Aidmatrix Network.
The images below are not real. They were part of Exercise 24.
Keith Thode
Chief Operating Officer
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Aidmatrix Deploys Microsoft's Windows Azure Platform
Aidmatrix recently deployed our first production solution on Microsoft's Windows Azure platform. This is very exciting as we have been researching, prototyping, and planning out how we would leverage Azure for a couple of years. This solution is an integration between two different modules in our supply chain management (SCM) solution set. It enables transactions to be shared in near real-time between the two modules. We selected Windows Azure (and in particular SQL Azure) to provide this integration as it answered the question as to how to simply integrate a 100% SaaS SCM Module and a second module which can be delivered both via SaaS and/or installed locally on a PC that synchronizes periodically. When run locally on a PC, the module enables the user to work without Internet connectivity and then synchronize their data back to the SaaS implementation when there is Internet connectivity (this was recently used in Haiti and is next up to be implemented in Zimbabwe). Congrats to the Aidmatrix team and thanks to all the Microsoft folks who volunteered their expertise to help us make this happen.
Michael Ross
VP - Delivery
Michael Ross
VP - Delivery
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Pena House Eco Home Project
The Pena House team was able to build an environmentally friendly multi-use building for their feeding program, church/community space, and coordinator housing. Aidmatrix provided local financial management, a Virtual Aid Drive for them to raise money, and strategic donor management services for this small project in Peru.
This was an all-volunteer, in-country effort with fundraising and project management for the Eco-Home also being performed on a voluntary basis by a Peruvian Student (living in the US during the school year) and another volunteer. Enjoy a few of the pictures provided to us by the Pena House team.
Meet the Family
Meet the Church
The Building Begins...
And the Project is Complete!
Aidmatrix is honored to help groups and organizations like the Pena House Project make their world a little bit better to live in.
Please help the Pena House Project with their future projects by donating here
This was an all-volunteer, in-country effort with fundraising and project management for the Eco-Home also being performed on a voluntary basis by a Peruvian Student (living in the US during the school year) and another volunteer. Enjoy a few of the pictures provided to us by the Pena House team.
Meet the Family
Meet the Church
The Building Begins...
And the Project is Complete!
Aidmatrix is honored to help groups and organizations like the Pena House Project make their world a little bit better to live in.
Please help the Pena House Project with their future projects by donating here
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Hurricanes Katrina & Rita - Remembering 5 years later
When Hurricane Katrina hit, most of our Aidmatrix team was working safely from home. The day after Katrina hit, we were online buying airplane tickets to get us as close to Louisiana as possible. Our partners at Adventist Community Services (ACS) were ready to move in with supplies, but they needed temporary facilities in which to stage them. Our partners at Feeding America were trucking in supplies, but all of the local foodbanks in the area were destroyed or under water. So with our COO, Keith Thode, we drove from Dallas to Houston picking up every gas can we could along the way, filling the trunk with gas. We met then volunteer, now VP of Delivery, Michael Ross, along with other volunteers in Houston where we picked up more water and supplies. Equipped with two laptops, a GPS and a wireless card, we headed for New Orleans.
Within a day, we had helped our partners in securing empty warehouse facilities (old retail stores and an empty church). They were splicing wires and hooking up electricity to make the warehouses ready to receive the semi tractor trailers coming in from across the country with supplies for Alexandria and New Iberia, Louisiana, and then they were off to Mississippi to repeat the same. So many good people working around-the-clock to get supplies in, breaking through the red tape, with a virtual team of volunteers and staff around the U.S. helping us load data, deliver training materials and map out the nearest resources via Internet and cell phones.
At each location, we literally helped our partners stand up emergency relief warehouses so the pallets of goods could be received and then quickly broken down into smaller parcels that the local relief workers could transport into the disaster area. We trained volunteers on the spot on how use the warehouse technology, to receive and deliver goods, so the turnaround could be as quick as possible. The flow of relief from these agencies was working. But sadly, we remember, too, that this grassroots response was not enough, and we made a pledge to help fix this.
Today, five years later, we've taken the arduous lessons learned during Katrina & Rita. We are working with local, State & Federal governments to create a network of relief programs that can work across State lines and even country boarders for when disaster threatens the lives of innocent people. We now have a network of thousands of charities, government officials and businesses all connected online. FEMA is now connected to and a leading participant in this network. And when Hurricanes Gustav and Ike threatened the region again during the U.S. presidential election of 2008, both Democrats and Republicans pointed the public to this network as an example of our new collective state of preparedness. We were ready.
What emerged is a movement of charities, business leaders and governments leveraging these tools to enhance and accelerate their response capabilities. We CAN help with what we have in our abundance. We've worked with the relief community to listen to their needs and find ways to help empower them to work with the public and the unsolicited donations that came from people wanting to help. Often it takes just a few small steps to link up the efforts and intentions of so many. We know the Gulf region is much better prepared today because of the work of so many who came to the table and worked together to ensure a disaster of this magnitude never happens again. We thank our partners in the relief community, government and corporate sector for that effort, which has not been easy. We thank the people of the Gulf for their undying spirit to survive and rebuild and to teach us all this great lesson.
Within a day, we had helped our partners in securing empty warehouse facilities (old retail stores and an empty church). They were splicing wires and hooking up electricity to make the warehouses ready to receive the semi tractor trailers coming in from across the country with supplies for Alexandria and New Iberia, Louisiana, and then they were off to Mississippi to repeat the same. So many good people working around-the-clock to get supplies in, breaking through the red tape, with a virtual team of volunteers and staff around the U.S. helping us load data, deliver training materials and map out the nearest resources via Internet and cell phones.
At each location, we literally helped our partners stand up emergency relief warehouses so the pallets of goods could be received and then quickly broken down into smaller parcels that the local relief workers could transport into the disaster area. We trained volunteers on the spot on how use the warehouse technology, to receive and deliver goods, so the turnaround could be as quick as possible. The flow of relief from these agencies was working. But sadly, we remember, too, that this grassroots response was not enough, and we made a pledge to help fix this.
Today, five years later, we've taken the arduous lessons learned during Katrina & Rita. We are working with local, State & Federal governments to create a network of relief programs that can work across State lines and even country boarders for when disaster threatens the lives of innocent people. We now have a network of thousands of charities, government officials and businesses all connected online. FEMA is now connected to and a leading participant in this network. And when Hurricanes Gustav and Ike threatened the region again during the U.S. presidential election of 2008, both Democrats and Republicans pointed the public to this network as an example of our new collective state of preparedness. We were ready.
What emerged is a movement of charities, business leaders and governments leveraging these tools to enhance and accelerate their response capabilities. We CAN help with what we have in our abundance. We've worked with the relief community to listen to their needs and find ways to help empower them to work with the public and the unsolicited donations that came from people wanting to help. Often it takes just a few small steps to link up the efforts and intentions of so many. We know the Gulf region is much better prepared today because of the work of so many who came to the table and worked together to ensure a disaster of this magnitude never happens again. We thank our partners in the relief community, government and corporate sector for that effort, which has not been easy. We thank the people of the Gulf for their undying spirit to survive and rebuild and to teach us all this great lesson.
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