MANILA, Philippines – As the rain poured and flooded the Metro, social media was abuzz with real-time reports and relief operations updates.
People sent in photos of flooded areas and posted shout-outs of evacuation centers and places that needed aid and rescue.
Aside from the unified hashtags devised to make information dissemination faster, one site aimed to collate the information available online into one platform to make rescue and relief efforts more efficient.
Liane Candelario, a BA Political Science student from the University of the Philippines-Diliman, put up iCANHELPH after going through the various tweets and status updates, and realizing that the amount of information available online was all over the place.
“I really didn’t think much about it. I was just browsing social media updates online and the idea just sort of hit me. My mind was experiencing information overload from all the statuses/tweets. I was really interested in helping out but I didn’t know how, where to start, or what to do. The idea for iCANHELPH just formed in my mind.”
As with all emergencies and urgent situations, time was of the essence and in a span of 7 hours the site was single-handedly put up.
“I know my way around buying domain and hosting, building a website, creating content, etc. But to do all of that in less than a day? I never thought I could [pull it off]. I just kept working on it the whole night and around 5:00 am, I was done. I’m just glad to have pulled it off.”
Help from friends
As soon as the site was functional, it didn’t take long before it spread all over social media. Within a few hours, submissions for donations, relief operations, volunteers, rescue reports and even nutritional guideline started coming in.
The volume of submissions was so large, Candelario had to enlist the help of her friends to help her manage and edit the submissions that come in.
“The main purpose of iCANHELPH is to centralize all relief-operations-related information. So if they have any new info, they can submit it to the form in the homepage. Still, the best way for me is to stay close to official government updates and hotlines especially when we’re stuck in the middle of calamities and online efforts can only go so far as a reactive mechanism.”
Asked what’s next for her site, Candelario said, “To be honest I haven’t thought that far yet. I mean, I made this website without a plan, much more an idea of what it’ll become in the future. I’ll probably ask around for feedback and see how I can improve the features and the general data presentation. I regret that I didn’t have much time to design and create graphics, but well, given the immediacy, I went for function over form. I can deal with the design later, for now I’m just happy that it’s useful.”
Starting out as an idea at the height of the typhoon, iCANHELPH is now a go-to platform for updates on relief efforts and rescue operations. The site is packed with information: a submit form on the homepage for donations and callouts, rescue reports, and even a page dedicated to typhoon-related infographics.
It’s a quick response of a person itching to make a difference. – Rappler.com
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