Starting my research, I first check David Bale's excellent World Wide Connectory initiative (housed here on ned) to get some basic info, and compare his partner-areas for Haiti with maps showing the extent of the earthquake's effect.

It seems that we're talking about partner-areas 833-838 *at the least*, likely area 838, and perhaps more.

Port-au-Prince alone is reported to have 2.5 million inhabitants.

Oops -- sorry, meant to give a link to a map I used, which shows the affected area :

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earth quakes/shakemap/global/shake/201 0rja6/

Two relatively new technology related items will have tremendous impact for this particular tragedy, social media...and mobile giving.

For those of you that may not even have the 5 minutes to make a small donation online for orgs helping out in Haiti here are four great $5-$10 TEXT giving opportunities (US only, I think)

http://mobilegivinginsider.com/p ost/333011946/mobile-fundraising -campaigns-to-help-haiti

Please share your half or full baked ideas here too as well please Jon.

Twitter is a flutter with thousands if not millions of posts WRT Haiti

Thanks Mark.

Here in Canada, two places I have found for making online donations:

www.msf.ca/donate - Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders - an NGO whose work I highly regard and recommend (reports are that they lost significant hospital facilities in the quake).

www.theHumanitarianCoalition.ca - CARE, Oxfam and Save the Children have combined their Canadian fundraising efforts at one website

I think the Salvation Army here in Canada is accepting donations via text message - I'll try to find out more.

More on the MSF situation:

http://www.msf.ca/news-media/new s-updates/

Well, as regards my partly-baked thoughts: thanks for spurring me, Mark. Being a computer-oriented guy, I'm inclined to think about how I can use my tech knowledge and contacts to help out in a meaningful way.

Currently, I'm searching for ways I might contribute to any IT-related relief efforts. Its early days so far - I've yet to find anything concrete; I'm certainly open to thoughts from all quarters.

I'm thinking about how I might help with donated refurbed computers, at the present moment.

I certainly admire the mobile fund-raising approach - intriguing.

I think food/water/shelter/meds are the first wave of needed support. Perhaps reach out to Partners in Health or Mercy Corps to find out more about the best timing for shipping comp/tech stuff,

I agree with Mark about the first wave of support, but it's not too soon to think about the second wave.

Tracy Kidder has an OpEd in the NYT. One of the things he points to is how aid groups in the past have not cooperated well with each other. I was very cheered when Jon posted a link to the combined fundraising efforts of Oxfam, Care and Save the Children.

Oxfam has experienced, if weary, workers who've been working since the devastating 2008 hurricanes. MSF has 800 staff on the ground, and even though their building was damaged they've treated thousands. I was blown away reading PIH_org's Titter stream, for example:

From our staff in Hinche: Loading up truck with emergency supplies to transport to PAP--probably a 4 hour drive.

That sort of detail provides a really new sort of transparency.

There are organizations on the ground capable of supporting immediate response. And the many to many media bring a something new to the table.

In terms of second response I looked at the Lambi Fund and Architects Without Borders.

I'm sure there are many other very good operations than the few I've mentioned, but all of the ones I've mentioned are organizations which collaborate with other organizations, local people and institutions. As Kidder puts the PIH model:

— a model where only a handful of Americans are involved in day-to-day operations, and Haitians run the show.

Architects Without Borders was already working with Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti and will step back to reassess what to do in response.

So lots of eyes are on Haiti now. I know I've followed several organizations at Twitter I didn't follow before. And as Mark points out there are thousands of posts. Groups are putting up what they're doing and the information is flowing across sites.

Looking at Ushahidi last night I was impressed that they had verified that planes could land at the airport. On the news tonight I saw the Head of the US Southern Command tell the story that his second was in Haiti at the time of the earthquake and went immediately to the airport to access the situation. The news reports from last night were saying that the airport was closed, but somehow Ushahidi was able to scoop the news.

Cooperation is something really new and the sorts of things that Jon is suggesting are more possible than ever. I agree that shipments of computers are second. Right now one the port is closed and road travel very hard not the least because everyone is out of the streets because buildings are unsafe. But Jon's expertise is needed and now with so many communications platforms just by hanging out at approximately the right place online, the chances are very good that he'll discover just the right match.

Never would I wish such a catastrophe on anyone. But it seems this time there are a few hopeful signs of sustained attention and collaboration.

Jon I'm disorganized, and my writing shows that. Something I want to be plain about is your question: "What can we do?" is really valuable. Thanks for starting a thread. I want to contribute to the discussion.

Okay, almost as just a note to remind myself as much as anything I'll link to Haiti Partners. From the looks of it this organization might be a good fit with your computer expertise.

Glad to see so many people active about Haiti. Keep tweeting and keep up the good work. Lets pray we can keep the light shined on the country for longer then this immediate time.

John, Mark, Christopher -- thanks for weighing in with your words of support and excellent pertinent info. (John you need not apologise -- I greatly admire the depth and thought you give your posts on ned, and aspire only to follow your example, however inadequately).

To start, I concur that basic aid, as Mark has detailed, is probably the most urgent need right now. I know monetary support to NGOs doing that important work will be key, especially as medical aid must reach injured survivors or dangers such as opportunistic infection (is that the correct term?) and unsafe water can start to become a concern.

I did find out a bit more about donations -- although I'm not a huge supporter of the Salvation Army, I respect their work, and they seemed to be the first in my stomping ground (Canada) able to accept donations for Haiti relief via cellphone text message.

Since then, I've dug a little deeper, and found that Rogers, one of our main telcos, is accepting cell text donations, partnering with ONEXONE to benefit aid groups on the ground such as Partners in Health: Haiti (as mentioned by both Mark and John, above). I wasn't really aware of PIH before, so thanks for helping me discover them -- I am impressed with what I've learned in my brief attempts at research.

Its perhaps an aside, but our own Governor-General, Her Excellency Michaëlle Jean, herself a Haitian immigrant, gave a very moving and personal press conference yesterday. I was only able to locate the untranslated French version on YouTube, albeit with incredible on-the-ground footage. You can watch her statement with translation, and English, here, covered by our national public broadcaster, the CBC (apologies for the advertising). The english portion begins at about 4:25 in the clip.

I've also just heard a report that the Canadian government will be matching all donations made by individuals to Haiti earthquake relief, up to $50 million. That is good news, given my doubts about the effectiveness of their initial response to the crisis.

I believe the first wave has to be done by the the NGO's and governments who have the facilities to act now. The best support by individuals for this effort would be a donation.

I like the idea of Architects Without Borders for the second wave especially as they would try and rebuild for the future with safer building methods:

"The NGOs focused on rebuilding need to be aware that in areas of great need structures are usually rebuilt in unsafe ways by well intentioned volunteers."

Yes the first wave is so very important and the best thing we can do now is to donate to organizations which have experience with disaster relief.

I'm so happy that Nicholas likes Architects Without Borders for the second wave because I do too. One of the things that's so important-- repeating myself-- is Partner's In Health model which first and foremost strives to strengthen local institutions. Architects Without Borders isn't an organization that will set up permanently in Haiti; they have to work through existing institutions on the ground there. And I think that this sort of across-organization cooperation and collaboration is new and very exciting.

Christina Jordan has been working diligently since her move to Belgium on the issue of collaboration. I happened upon her work in Uganda in the really early stages when her emails were being sent around. I sort of followed the developments with Yahoo groups, but it was really only later from a link from her Web site that I discovered Onet, and hence got a better picture of what she was doing.

I mention it because her early work had such excitement about the possibilities that the Internet could bring. Clearly Christina is still excited, but now has a much clearer view of the many challenges involved.

I think that the people who participated at Onet and now here at Ned have a really strong skill set in re online cooperation and collaboration, and sometimes think we don't recognize how unique it is. I'm so pleased that even though many of the Onet regulars don't show up here people have maintained connections online.

Something we can do is pay attention to what's happening in Haiti in the first wave and the second. Part of our skill set is helping others to pay attention online too. And another is knowing about networks to connect people with good ideas.

The enormity of the problems people all over face, not just in Haiti, is daunting. Surely what anyone of us can do is small. However small actions added together can be very great indeed. All of us have much to offer in helping to put actions together. The big picture is important, but what to do is more local. What to do is rooted in individuals one to another. The basis is in compassion.

Yesterday going through Tweets, news reports and pictures about Haiti I felt such sadness. I feel joy here at Ned knowing that people all over care and want to try to do something good in the face of such tragedy and suffering. In the big picture the concerted actions of many will make a real difference.

Thanks for pointing out a significant danger (unintentionally unsafe reconstruction by well-meaning folks), Nicholas. I'm intrigued by the Architects NGO, and will check out the link (my gratitude to John as well for mentioning it).

I think that you're right -- it seems there may be 2 "waves" of relief work that will need to occur. Some further discussion in the NYT: http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytim es.com/2010/01/14/the-help-that- haiti-needs/

John, thanks for the pointer to Haiti Partners. With deepest respect and gratitude, please allow me to say, I've developed some wariness regarding church- and faith-based aid groups (hence my hesitation in relation to the Salvation Army, above). However, I appreciate the fact that HP is up-front about who they are, and I will keep reading, to try to learn more.

And I do want to acknowledge your point about cooperation between aid groups; that NYT op-ed article is illuminating. Much appreciated!

Some more Canada-related info, which falls under the wave-1 category:

Our federal government has announced that two navy Frigates will depart Thursday morning for Haiti, loaded with relief supplies.

And a Toronto HUSAR (H.eavy U.rban S.earch A.nd R.escue) team has also been dispatched to Port-au-Prince to assist in finding survivors.

(Techie side-note: The HUSARs use a search dog equipped with a head-mounted camera to relay images back to his handlers. This cool device was developed by a professor at Ryerson University, with whom I went to high school!)

In regards to working with church and faith-based groups and having some wariness, I certainly agree with you!

I grew up in the American South and I think that colors my views about religion and politics quite a bit. Quite a dominant religion was Southern Baptist. Recently an old friend of my father's seems to me to be trying too hard to "convert" him. And as in so many things my response to that has been an inchoate mess. I've found myself saying some not so very nice things and that's made me have to think hard. Thinking hard doesn't necessarily get me very far though.

I'll go through my thinking process about Haiti Partners. It's a bit superficial and in no way meant to influence you, Jon. I would be interested in how others make decisions about working with faith-base organizations.

Haiti Partners is connected with Tony Campolo who is a Baptist. One of the aspects of Baptists is the emphasis on the individual; crudely put: "We don't need no stinking priests." Naturally this leads to a great deal of variation among Baptists. For example Tony Campolo takes the position that homosexual acts are sin but not orientation. According to the Wikipedia article his wife basically says "screw that" and thinks if there's no sin in orientation then the way to live is in loving and committed relationships. So something that's not often understood about Baptists is they are often used to disagreements between people they are closest too.

Southern Baptists especially since the Reagan years have gone hard core political. The Southern Baptist Convention has political roots as they were pro-slavery and many Baptists at the time were abolitionists. So the political threads go back, but the diverse thread that Campolo represents among Baptists is also present. My dad's friend is not Southern Baptist, but has conflated religion with a very hard right politics.

I found out about Haiti Partners via Chris Blattman whose brother is the co-founder of the organization. So I paid close attention to Kent Annan's biography. To be crude, his religious views didn't seem too wacked out to me. I liked very much that the organization had roots in South Florida and the Florida Haitian community. Education is a very important issue to me, so the programs of Haiti Partners are aligned with my interests and not wedded to a hard right agenda.

To be frank I was far more interested in the black faces in the group than the white ones. The connection to the Limye Lavi Foundation pleased me. That group's primary focus is on ending child servitude in Haiti, something I'm very keen on.

So looking over the Haiti Partner's site my personal feeling was a tentative thumbs up. I think it's fine indeed for people to contribute only to secular organizations. My view is there are some religious organizations which are worthwhile collaborating with. A big reason for this is my belief that community-based organizations are very important to support and many of these are connected to religion.

Years ago my brother worked for Food for the Poor. Looking at their Web site all the religious stuff seems to hide why they are effective. The reason they are effective is they don't do programs simply organize aid, primarily food aid among trusted community groups.

Being irreligious myself, sometimes I get wigged out when I'm around religious people. Then again I have to acknowledge that a good number of my good friends are quite religious. I think finding a balance is something everyone has to negotiate on their own.

Hey John, I haven't posted in a while but your post gave me a good chuckle. My Grandfather and Uncle were Southern Baptist preachers and I was actually asked to leave and not come back from my church when I was 16 because the preacher did not appreciate my questions. Hmmmmmmmmm

But that is another story. What I wanted to comment on is that you, me, all of us, need to be careful that we don't lump all religious groups into one pot. Some, I know, are a bit fanatic and a bit over the top. I have had some dealings with some of those who will offer food to the poor but only if they convert.

But actually, those are not so many. I have met people from so many different religions who are doing some fantastic work for the very same reasons that we do....they want to make the world a better place. Most of them are really loving and caring people. yes, they may want to pray over the food they give or the help they give but most of the poor people I know in Uganda would appreciate that. Faith is the one thing they are rich in.

I do recommend that anyone who wants to donate to such organizations should check them out. Find out what they are about. Most will have a website.

I actually find that I am much more leery of non-faith based groups who are just everywhere now. So many scams out there that use any disaster as an excuse to get money. People are so good during these trying times and are so ready to help. That makes them easy targets to someone calling on the phone to solicit donations. We just had a piece done on our local news that several people here in Washington have already been caught soliciting money for Haiti as a scam. So we all need to be really diligent and check things out before just giving money.

But there are many many ligitimate groups collecting money so I do encourage everyone to give what they can.

Thanks John -- you always have such fantastic insights! Of course, I don't think of you as trying to influence me unduly, except with well-researched info, which you are great at providing.

Your comments on religion are thought-provoking, and I hope with renewed interest to return to the HP site to read up on it further.

It also prods me to mention an aspect of this that another friend of mine raised -- leaving aside Pat Robertson's absurd assertions, she pointed to the ages-old spiritual nature of Haitian society, and how its hard not to see it as living under some sort of bane. (I haven't seen much constructive discussion on this, but I'll keep my eyes and fingers peeled.)

[Edited by Jon A 10-Jan-15 - typo]

Great ideas from both of you. I know that the Red Cross is also taking donations as are a number of other bonafide NGOs. The Text messaging idea (which is brilliant) is only available in the US. I'm wondering how it could be instigated here.

Two relatively new technology related items will have tremendous impact for this particular tragedy, social media...and mobile giving.

For those of you that may not even have the 5 minutes to make a small donation online for orgs helping out in Haiti here are four great $5-$10 TEXT giving opportunities (US only, I think)

http://mobilegivinginsider.com/p ost/333011946/mobile-fundraising -campaigns-to-help-haiti

Actually, Canada has text-to-donate facilities too -- the Salvation Army (mentioned above), and Rogers cellphones can also donate via text to ONEXONE and Partners in Health: Haiti.

http://www.onexone.org/get-invol ved.php

NB Its good to be able to make quick donations, but bear in mind that long-term support is also important, and also make sure to verify that you aren't being taken in by a scammer pretending to collect funds for Haiti. They're reportedly out there.

Hello Evvy!! You wrote:

So many scams out there that use any disaster as an excuse to get money.

This is sadly true. And from the Tsunami experience a slightly different issue came up and that was receiving more donation money than the organization could quickly use. This caused a major embarrassment for the Red Cross and MSF even stopped accepting donations for their tsunami relief efforts a time if I remember. So especially in the second wave it's good to have some sense of how the money will be used just as we pay attention to that in any other charitable giving we do.

Oh, and I certainly wasn't trying to denigrate Baptists in any way. I was just trying to point out that Baptists are often no strangers to controversy. I mean at 16 you were told you'd have to think for yourself. Traumatic at the time for you I'm sure Evvy, but it's really a part of Baptist character I think.

A couple of links and a half backed observation:

I was so impressed with the rapid response of Ushahidi. Erik Hersman--you rock! The TED Blog has a post that shows how useful it is when people organize. The success was in no small part the result of the efforts of the International Network of Crisis Mappers. Organizing something is good, you never know exactly why it will be important.

There have been calls for granting Haitians Temporary Protected Status in the USA. I think this is a good idea. Listening to Bill Clinton (not online yet)on the PBS Newshour he mentioned that one of the things that makes this different is now there is an organized Haitian community in the USA. I think that properly done a TPS program could be very helpful to the longer-term rebuilding necessary in Haiti.

My local PBS station tonight was quick to identify people in my local area involved in Haiti on the news tonight. One of the persons interviewed was a doctor who had a long standing relationship with Hospital Albert Schweitzer. That hospital is about 21/2 hours drive from Port au Prince. Another representative said communications are sporadic but the hospital was not damaged and is receiving hundreds of injured. That rather shocked me given the distance from the area of devastation. The hospital only has two operating rooms and is not prepared for the influx of so many critically injured.

A friend grew up with a father who was a professor of medicine and would joke about holidays like Thanksgiving where medical students would celebrate with them. The conversations often veered to the gruesome from her point of view. Anyhow the doctor on TV was calm and clearly a very compassionate man but made no bones about how dire the situation is. He made the point that after the initial emergency people are shocked, but 3 million people without food , shelter, water will become enraged after about 3 days of lack.

I am not able to find any automatic translation of Kreyol online. It would seem that organizing translation services with relatively quick turn around might be really useful. I don't know how to do that and don't have contacts with Haitians in the USA really. But translation does seem like it may be an important issue.

Tales in the Hood has a great post on the different phases of disaster relief and development:

For the next 60-90 days, the relief effort in Haiti is going to be a lot about moving large volumes of stuff (food, water, meds, a zillion different kinds of “kits”…) from point A to point B. It is going to be a largely about logistics, and about an organization’s ability to manage logistics on a large/rapidly expanding scale, under massive pressure in a highly degraded security environment. Doing these well requires a number of very specific organizational capacities. (I’m hoping that someone can put up a few great posts specifically related to logistics in the context of disaster response.

There is a section of the post that discusses the problem that given the proximity to Haiti from the USA that many many small organizations will go there. The problems with that were already pointed out by Evvy. But here's a snippet from that section:

There’s another argument which says: this is a massive relief effort. Those organizations who will do the most good are those who those with established capacity (people + stuff + the ability to distribute it), who coordinate well within the community, and who stay focused on the primary needs.

In my own probably "pink-eye glasses" way I think there's an opportunity for smaller organizations to begin organizing now for activities in the spring and summer. That now is the time for smaller organizations to develop some coordination and possible collaboration. In a way that there is a window for smaller organizations to develop capacity now.

I don't think I've linked to the Lambi Fund yet. The sort of longer run approach is very necessary. I think organizations like this are going to mightily challenged by the sorts of issues Tales from the Hood warns about. But I do think it's possible that organizations like the Lambi Fund to play an important role.

I don't have clear thoughts about what to do, but I do think that there's much to do now which is geared to implementation months from now and that working on that is a legitimate response to this overwhelming catastrophe.

[Edit] I want to note that the Lambi Fund is now directing people to donate to disaster relief they link to Google's Disaster Relief. So they're being very responsible.

Evvy, thanks much for joining in the discussion -- I whole-heartedly agree with your comment that we should avoid making generalisations.

I myself was "dedicated" in a Baptist church as an infant, and I grew up with church influences all around me. My dad was an ordained minister (now retired, the only gig he ever really did as a clergy was to be pastor of a circus -- but that's for another time...) in the United Church, which is fairly similar here in Canada to the one in the U.S., I gather. My folks raised me to have a healthy skepticism for whatcha call yer "organised religion".

Anyway, I concur that the organisations carrying out relief operations should be evaluated on their own merit -- there are probably some questionable non-religious ones, too. Thanks for highlighting that.

According to the Huffington Post, the Red Cross in the U.S. has collected $5 million through text-to-donate for Haiti, as of last night. This is apparently a record amount.

We have just been checking and France has text-donating as well. I guess it is quite wide spread these days. (They call text messaging 'texting' by the way.)