The Foreign Service Journal, April 2010

A P R I L 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43 Text HAITI: Coordinating Contributions State played a key role in another very successful effort to help Haiti. Immediately after the Jan. 12 earth- quake, people and organizations called and e-mailed the State De- partment in a rush to donate to re- lief efforts. Within hours of the quake, department personnel coor- dinated with cell-phone companies to develop “Text HAITI,” by which cell-phone users could make imme- diate donations via text message. “Text HAITI” generated $400,000 the first day and more than $32 million in the first month. Katie Stanton, a special adviser to Sec. Clinton, helped develop another system to coordinate specific needs with the extensive level of donations. She explains: “We- HaveWeNeed is basically a Craigslist for Haiti. The prob- lem we’re trying to solve right after the earthquake was that all of our e-mail inboxes exploded” because people from the private sector were so generous. The challenge was to get those contributions to the people who needed them. WeHaveWeNeed coordinated the donations from more than 100 organizations, offering everything from medical supplies to tents. In the Future: The Power of Partnership A natural disaster on the scale of Haiti’s stretches all re- sources very thin — especially communications, logistics, organizational manpower and supplies of basic needs such as food, shelter and medicine. The response demonstrates the power of partnership and technology to marshal the resources of the international community; to link rescuers to victims; to connect individual donors to relief organiza- tions; and to connect families to their relatives in the dis- aster zone. “We are lucky,” says Stanton. “Technology is already in the hands of so many. There are roughly 4.6 billion mobile phones out there. The challenge for us is how do we tap into it and help make that more useful?” The 21st-century technologies and partnerships em- ployed in response to the catastrophe in Haiti provide an early model not only for effective, collective response in a major crisis, but also an example of more proactive American engagement across a wide spectrum of diplomatic is- sues. The U.S. and the State De- partment will continue to expand the use of such statecraft partner- ships and technologies. Office of eDiplomacy Department of State Washington, D.C. L ESSONS FROM A CEH The Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince occurred less than a month after the fifth anniversary of the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami. Sec. Clinton, immediately recognizing the parallels be- tween the two disasters, drew upon the knowledge the U.S. had attained during the tsunami relief and recon- struction efforts to formulate an initial strategy for inter- national response to the Haitian earthquake. An estimated 225,000 people died in the 2004 tsunami. The hardest-hit area was Aceh, Indonesia, the closest area to the epicenter of the earthquake, where an estimated 165,000 people lost their lives and 500,000 survivors were left homeless. The outpouring of international relief as- sistance was unprecedented. Over 100 countries pro- vided an estimated $6.7 billion in funding for recovery and reconstruction activities, $400 million from the U.S. government alone. Why were subsequent Aceh reconstruction efforts suc- cessful? USAID Jakarta cites three key factors that helped ensure this success: local Indonesian leadership and re- sponsibility for leading reconstruction efforts; broad-based sectoral assistance to repair the damage and simultane- ously address sources of administrative, financial and civil conflict; and the fact that the structures of the Indonesian central government continued to function. What should the United States focus on as interna- tional recovery assistance to Haiti proceeds? Mission Jakarta suggests the following: • Support government priorities and efforts. • Start by building the infrastructures that support basic human needs. • Use local resources and involve the community to support social, logistical and rebuilding efforts. F O C U S Within hours of the quake, State personnel coordinated with cell-phone companies to develop “Text HAITI,” by which individuals could make immediate donations via text message.