Virtual frontline for emergencies

Getting reliable and up to date information on humanitarian emergencies and conflicts is a major challenge for development agencies.

Often, global crises are met by too little, too late.  News of events on the ground become lost and we are left learning lessons for the future rather than tackling the causes of the crisis. The rights of those in the centre of crisis and conflicts are often pushed aside and innocent people are killed or left with long terms physical or mental trauma.

Channel16 is a terrific new tool for gathering and collating information from people on the ground to create an overview of situations as they unfold. It fixes an important feedback loop to help donor agencies, NGOs and governments respond appropriately.

How does Channel16 work?

Who: Anyone who is on the ground in an affected region

What: Contribute reports from the ground. These will be automatically loaded on to the Ushahidi map in the “On the Ground” section of the website

Why: To provide background, depth and flavour to information on the situation, and  to balance information coming from formal media sources with direct reports.

What: Location (region or specific place), information – however short or long – on what people are doing, what people are saying, how they feel, what issues are being particularly faced.

How: Send a text message with the above information to: +44 7537 400 721 (the text will be charged at the local rate)

You can submit a report on the website using reporting tools.

Or by email send a message to reports@ch16.org

OR by voice message – use one of the numbers below to leave a voice
message that will be uploaded to the site.

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