On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Its shocking aftermath, the scale of which is only now coming to light, once again demonstrates the need for timely, accurate information to strengthen aid, response and recovery after a disaster.
This curated list, that I will continue to updated regularly, now features a comprehensive collection of links to vital satellite imagery sources from Google and elsewhere, on the ground local information sources in French, a collection of videos showing the devastation and links to a number of other vital news & information aggregation portals.
In November 2009, I was invited to participate in a field mission to Haiti by Dr. Soon-Hong Choi, UN CITO/ASG, through the ICT4Peace Foundation. The mission was organized by Mr. Rudy Sanchez, Director, Information and Communications Technology Division, DPKO. In Port au Prince, Gonaives and Les Cayes, we met with a number of dedicated local and international UN staff associated with MINUSTAH, including UN Peacekeepers. I can’t help but be really saddened that most of those we met are missing and unaccounted for.
An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance.
I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002.
I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents.
Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs.
Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts.
I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.
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One thought on “Vital information on Haiti earthquake aid”
They say the roads are not useable well it didn’t stop em in Viet Nam in getting supplies in. All heavy equipment and food and water and people can be transported with choppers, why aren’t they being used?
ICT for Peacebuilding (#ICT4Peace) 
They say the roads are not useable well it didn’t stop em in Viet Nam in getting supplies in. All heavy equipment and food and water and people can be transported with choppers, why aren’t they being used?