Katrina/Rita Mobile Phone Project
As Huricane Katrina made tens of thousands homeless, I had the opportunity to receive first-hand reports from Pam Peterson, a social worker and long-time friend who had gone to Houston to support the evacuees there.
Very quickly, she recognized that among the biggest challenge at the Astrodome and surrounding shelters was being able to communicate quickly and effectively with various support networks and evacuees. Out of this challenge the Katrina (and now Rita) Mobile Phone Project was born.
In the last three weeks, many in the Guidewire Group and DEMO communities have come to the support of this project and today, the first shipment of phones is on its way to Houston, to be delivered to Care for Elders/Sheltering Arms and program director Jan Edwards.
Nearly a month after the first hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, the elderly and disabled remain the most at risk, separated from families and struggling to find adequate care and accommodation. Care for Elders continues to work with these special victims of the storms in the weeks and months ahead.
So how will the phones be used? As Jan Edwards told me:
Now, we are challenged to provide service for those elders who remain in temporary shelter or permanent housing, scattered throughout the county. We plan to do case management on site for them in a variety of settings, but we will have, I believe, similar needs for communication among the workers and volunteers, and to connect to community services and other informational resources. As generous as this donation is, it may be that we can provide them directly to the seniors for their own ongoing use. They have been placed in different housing situations in a strange city and have many unmet needs to deal with in the long term, as well as safety concerns. There are situations and needs that are emerging as I type this and try to answer my phone, for which I am sure the donated phones will make helping possible.
While several individuals have come forward to help in this project, one company has demonstrated outstanding generosity and compassion: AIRMEDIA. AIRMEDIA launched its application development and deployment platform for mobile entertainment at DEMOfall last week, and had acquired cases of mobile phones to demonstrate its technology to market influencers. Then, CEO and founder Don Harris decided that the phones would be put to better use in Houston, with the victims and volunteers of Huricane Katrina.
I'm tremendously grateful to Don and AIRMEDIA for this donation.
You can still contribute to the project in one of two ways:
1. You can donate a mobile phone(s), with or without pre-paid service. We are collecting phones at the Guidewire Group office and plan to send a second shipment late next week.
2. You can donate money to purchase phones and/or pre-paid service plans. Checks can be made to "Big Bark Publishing," noting "Katrina Phone Project" in the memo field. Donations can be sent to the Guidewire Group office.
The address at Guidewire Group is:
Chris Shipley
Katrina Phone Project
Guidewire Group LLC
600 Townsend Street, Suite 120e
San Francisco, CA 94103
Posted by Chris Shipley at September 29, 2005 02:35 PM
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