Digital volunteers from the Digital Humanitarian Network have been working around the clock to support those impacted by Hurricane Harvey. Following catastrophic impacts from Hurricane Harvey and excessive flooding, Standby Task Force, Translators without Borders and Humanity Road have activated via the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN) charter to provide support to first response agencies.

Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast of the United States as a Category 4 storm around 9:45pm local time (US Central Time Zone / -5 UTC) Friday night August 25th. Residents of the state of Texas are experiencing the most powerful storm in 56 years.  Extreme wind, and heavy rains have impacted a broad area, and by the time the storm ends, some areas may see more than 50 inches of rain, forecasters said.

The DHN organizations are providing support to identify and report urgent unmet needs .  The DHN was activated on Sunday August 27, 2017.  The Standby Task Force (http://blog.standbytaskforce.com/), Humanity Road https://www.humanityroad.org/ and Humanity Road tapped Translators without Borders (https://translatorswithoutborders.org/), Help Earth Foundation (http://helpearthfoundation.org) also stepped forward to help with Hazmat needs.  The solution organizations   quickly formed inter-disciplinary teams to meet the urgent information needs of those affected by this major event. Below is more information about each of these members. 

Humanity Road is a top rated nonprofit charity providing support to the public and aid agencies during sudden onset disaster. They monitor social media to save lives and close the black hole of communications during natural disaster.   They help route urgent needs for resolution and provide aid in the form of information at the onset of disasters such as early response situation reports, social media analysis and 3W data, both independently and as part of DHNetwork activations.  They work closely with DHN member partners to provide this information to enhance partner deliverables.

The Standby Task Force (SBTF) is a non-profit organisation which organises digital volunteers into a flexible, trained and prepared network ready to deploy in crises.  The concept for the Task Force was launched at the 2010 International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM 2010) to streamline online volunteer support for crisis mapping following lessons learned in Haiti, Chile and Pakistan, and to provide a dedicated interface for the humanitarian community.
Our main objective is to effectively assist crisis affected communities through co-operation with local and international responders. To this effect, we aim to increase the ability and skills of SBTF volunteers through a continuous dialogue and coordination with other tech and crisis mapping volunteer efforts. This will enable SBTF to provide a sustainable and predictable service to first responders. We are also directly engaging colleagues from the traditional humanitarian community in order to develop the SBTF structure and protocols with full understanding of principles of effective and ethical humanitarian response.

Translators Without Borders (TWB) Translators without Borders, a non-profit organization, envisions a world where knowledge knows no barriers. The mission of Translators without Borders is to provide people access to vital knowledge in their language by connecting nonprofit organizations with our community of translators, building local language capacity and raising awareness about language barriers.

Help Earth Foundation (HEF) The Help Earth Foundation (HEF) was created with a mission to leverage artistic content to support charitable efforts to mid-sized nonprofits and larger organizations with local offices that are working hard to make a difference in communities across the United States. The foundation’s causes are picked by HEF partners or by our associated http://AltaArtists.com In coordination with our for-profit partner, Altavoz Entmt, HEF manages the connection between artists, bands and labels and the local nonprofits they choose to give a portion of their proceeds.