Haiti Earthquake Relief: an Alternative Way to Help

This article from Oregon Live talks about how many people are trying to help earthquake relief efforts through technical support. Oregon State's Open Source Lab and a portland company, NedSpace, are organizing an event that will help by organizing maps, relevant news and various kinds of data for the volunteers in Haiti. The event is held this Saturday in Portland with about 20 confirmed volunteers and is one of many similar events being held around the nation.

I thought this was interesting because it's a way for people to help the survivors of the earthquake in a different way. Normally, most think that they can only help by giving money or traveling to the affected region. Instead, some have found that this is a creative route to help out if a person cant make a monetary donation, but instead give their time to help the volunteers that are physically in Haiti and allow them to do their work more effectively.

The article brings up issues of how Americans are helping disaster victims in the poor economy. Because of this economy, people dont have as much money to spare, so they are finding alternatives. It also might be interesting for a project to look at how the money and time that Americans are donating is being spent on the relief efforts. How efficient is the system at delivering help to Haitians? How could the system be made better so we can make our dollars stretch?