NEW ORLEANS–In a sign of generosity and community, 30 members of the New Orleans community came together last Saturday for CrisisCampNola. The event, billed as an “unconference” brought the New Orleans’ creative and tech class together with non-developers and 10 haitian New Orleanians.

By the end of the day, the developers built a website, www.neworleanshaiti.org, to serve as a communication tool for the 4,000 New Orleanians of Haitian descent. Also, developers worked on national scale open source technology for Haitian relief efforts.

“We can’t thank you enough for helping us through this tough time,” said Hector Louis-Jeune, a representative from the Haitian Catholic Community of New Orleans.

No one has been immune to the recent news about the devastating earthquakes that rocked Haiti.  Support in the form of money, clothes, and food have already poured out to aid the the nation.  But technologist across the country have found an unique way to support the disaster.  Under a cause called Crisis Commons programmers, developers, and everyday volunteers have united together to use their skills for good.  Crisis Commons spawned from talks that happened at Transparency Camp 09 and Government 2.0 Camp.  Several “campers” exchanged ideas about how to better connect people, utilize social networks, and disseminate information through the use of technology, especially during times and places of crisis.

Crisis Common is now a national event to develop technology tools to assist in times of crisis — particularly in support of the recent Haitian earthquakes.  So far Crisis Common techies from Atlanta to Los Angeles have helped develop such tools as Mobile Applications For Crisis Response, a Craigslist style exchange area for self-identified needs and requests by non-profits assisting in Haiti relief operations, and family reunification systems. These are just a few of the tools that people have created by pooling their skills sets and resources.

Sloane Berrent from The Causemopolitan and Robert Fogarty from Evacuteer have partnered to put on a barcamp style event on this Saturday modeled after Crisis Common called CrisisCampNOLA.  The event will get volunteers together for a day to contribute something in line with the Crisis Commons cause.  Developers (people with skills in programming, web design, application development, UI) and non developers (everyday people who are good at organizing, planning, social media, or scribing) are asked to come out this Saturday, January 23rd from 9AM until 6PM to help the group achieve its goal.  The event will be held at LaunchPad NOLA, 643 Magazine St.

If you want to help the CrisisCampNOLA cause feel free to show up at the event on Saturday and give a helping hand, tell a friend, or just get the word out.

Register: http://crisiscampnola.eventbrite.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Orleans-LA/Crisis-Camp-NOLA-crisiscampNOLA/260688229635

Twitter: http://twitter.com/crisiscampnola

Phone: 310.422.4895 (Yes, this is a local person)

Hector Jeune estimates there are 4,000-6,000 Haitian New Orleanians

NEW ORLEANS–On Thursday January 7, 2010, evacuteer.org director Robert Fogarty presented to the City Council the organization’s 2009 accomplishments and 2010 goals. In addition to the eight minute presentation, Councilmembers Jackie Clarkson, Cynthia Willard-Lewis and Arnie Fielkow gave positive feedback and asked engaged questions. Colonel Jerry Sneed director of the City’s Office of Homeland Security was scheduled to testifiy as well but had to attend to another matter. After the meeting, he sent an email to all of the council members:

“I feel it is important for you to know how well this organization is doing and how we plan to continue to use them.  I can’t emphasize enough to you how important I think this organization is…”

In 2009:

~evacuteer.org  recruited and trained 21 partner organizations and 426 “evacuteers” (evacuation + volunteers) nearly every Saturday throughout hurricane season in partnership with the Red Cross to train citizen volunteers on their roles within the City Assisted Evacuation Plan in advance of a category three or higher storm.
~evacuteer.org  developed a defined and direct training program providing information on roles of citizen volunteers in the CAEP
~evacuteer.org  received its 501c3 tax exempt status from the IRS six weeks after sending the application on model cooperative non-profit government model based much off of Parkway Partners where the City’s applicable director has a seat on the board and the non-profit’s mission is to directly enhance an initiative overseen by the government(In our case it’s Col. Sneed, in Parkway Partners, its Ann MacDonald)
~evacuteer.org  developed an extensive social media following on twitter and facebook and traditional media outlets WDSU, WGNO, WVUE, WWOZ, WWNO, WEZB, the Times Picayune, the Gambit’s “40 under 40 issue” featured evacuteer.org
~evacuteer.org founder  Robert Fogarty presented to a group of Pakistani diplomats on a trip to America studying recovery and disaster sponsored by the US Department of State
~evacuteer.org  founder Robert Fogarty presented to the World Conference on Disaster Management about utilizing branding and social media innovation to engage citizens in disaster preparedness.

2010 goals:
~Host a beginning of hurricane summit for all 426 evacuteers and partner organizations to dust off CAEP concepts and prepare for storm season as well as new possible partner organizations
~Have all 17 CAEP pick-up points “adopted” by neighborhood associations and/or faith based groups
~Increase unaffiliated volunteer involvement by 20 percent to from 100 unaffiliated volunteer to  120
~Increase partner organization involvement and commitment by 30 percent form 21 groups to 28

NEW ORLEANS- Equipped with a good idea, momentum and two  talented MBA students, evacuteer.org is writing its business plan tailored towards an upcoming entry into Tulane University’s $50,000 business plan competition.

Guillermo Olivos, a Yale MBA who interned with evacuteer.org in the summer 2009 and now holds a seat on the organization’s board of directors, and Louise Murphy, a Tulane MBA, are writing the plan. Professor Peter Ricchiuti, a business professor at Tulane, is the team’s faculty advisor.

Evacuteer.org, however, is an unlikely organization with a niche so narrow and defined that constructing a business plan in a traditional manner has its challenges.

“We fill a need that exists in New Orleans and we fill a need that could exist in several locations around the world,” founder and director Robert X. Fogarty says. “But our initial business plan is focusing on our operations in New Orleans and defining why we are a worthy organization, valuable enough to be invested in by philanthropists and the public sector.”

Evacuteer.org’s mission is to aid and enhance the operations of the City Assisted Evacuation Plan with volunteer labor in the event of mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. The City Assisted Evacuation Plan is a free evacuation option for New Orleanians with out their own transportation out of the City.

“Some say that an organization that is relevant six months of of the year isn’t a sustainable concept,” Fogarty says. “I say that if there is any place in the world that needs to be thinking, working and preparing year-round for a window that’s only open six months (hurricane season) it’s New Orleans.

In addition to the $50,000 Tulane business competition, Tulane University also is sponsoring a $20,000 “New Day” competition awarding a winner with a plan based in social entrepreneurship. Organizations are eligible to apply–and win–both competitions.

In 2009, evacuteer.org recruited 426 New Orleanians and 22 partner groups to assist should a mandatory evacuation be called by harnessing social media, powerful branding and leveraging in-kind resources. The organization received its 501c3 status charitable status in six weeks and spent less than $1,500 in 2009 to create and build an organization that was featured on WWNO, WWOZ, WDSU, WVUE, WGNO, The Huffington Post, Change.org, The Times-Picayune, and the Gambit Weekly.

Evacuteer.org has also been featured on numerous blogs and social media sites including Curious Tribe, 504ward, Humid Beings, and Launchpad TV.

Its first fundraiser, the “Bye Bye Hurricane Season” celebration, netted close to $8,000 for the organization including nearly $1,000 in post-party unsolicited donations.

For more information about the Tulane University Business Plan and New Day competitions click here:

http://www.tulanebusinessplancompetition.com/

http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1223097623224550.xml&coll=1

Volunteers key to successful evacuation
by Robert X. Fogarty, Guest Columnist, The Times-Picayune
October 04, 2008

It seems a long time ago now, July 9, when volunteers portrayed homeless men, elderly women and mothers with children during a dry run of the city’s assisted evacuation plan. Afterward, everyone involved not-so-quietly hoped we’d never have to do it for real.

But when Mayor Ray Nagin called for assisted evacuation buses to roll Aug. 30 at 8 a.m., I nervously called the non-profits and New Orleanians who had agreed to volunteer should the plan be activated, hoping they’d come through.

The next morning and over the next 35 hours, more than 300 people — individual citizens, non-profit organizations, city and state employees as well as young AmeriCorps members who moved to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — helped evacuate approximately 18,000 New Orleanians in the first no-kidding rendition of the plan.
The evacuees were among New Orleans’ most vulnerable citizens.

A homeless man with one shoe. A mother with five kids under 8. An 80-year-old married couple.

Family after family arrived at the Union Passenger Terminal. And off they went. Almost 800 Latinos with few English skills arrived, and bilingual volunteers assured them they wouldn’t be hassled about their residency status. The spectrum of evacuees was large.

Many evacuees were run-of-the-mill New Orleanians, who, for some reason or another, have not adopted the American “I need a car” mindset. My favorite group was the 20 international young people who work on temporary visas as servers and busboys, linen changers and line cooks in French Quarter restaurants and hotels. They arrived with huge traveling backpacks and “What did we get ourselves into?” looks on their faces.

As each bus approached the terminal from the 17 pick-up points, volunteers distributed water or grabbed wheelchairs when special needs residents unloaded.

We waved to several people I’d known pre-evacuation and wished them well, including a clerk at the Walgreens near my apartment and a retired bookkeeper who volunteers at City Hall.

The local city-bus operators shuffled thousands from the different neighborhood pickup points to the Union Passenger Terminal. Special needs citizens were given door-to-door service. The planes, trains and buses took evacuees to cities and towns in northern Louisiana like Shreveport as well as shelters and Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas.
Once the terminal shut its doors about 12 hours before Gustav made landfall, it looked perfectly ready to resume Amtrak and Greyhound service. A city employee who worked the Superdome during Katrina said one of the assisted evacuation plan’s litmus tests was the appearance of the Union Passenger Terminal after the last train headed to Memphis.

When we left, I told him I’d be happy to eat a bag lunch on the floor.

And just as they departed, they soon returned. Larman Sparkman’s left foot hit New Orleans soil Thursday, Sept. 4, making him the first returned resident in the city’s historic and unprecedented assisted evacuation.
There wasn’t a welcoming committee waiting for Sparkman and the people he’d spent the past week with, just a few people who happened to be on site at Union Passenger Terminal planning for the first of the evacuee arrivals to begin the following day

Sparkman and 26 returned others became the impromptu trail-blazers of an elaborate plan that, by and large, was a success. The evacuation would have saved many lives if Hurricane Gustav had actually carried the bite forecasters feared.

There are two camps with observations about the treatment of city-assisted evacuees at shelters.
Some evacuees said they were treated miserably in northern Louisiana. Social activists are protesting allegedly inhumane shelters. But some activists also told me during the evacuation how well they thought the plan was working.
Shelter-condition protesters came to City Hall recently. As residents of Galveston and other Texas communities dealt with Hurricane Ike devastation and several southern Louisiana parishes were still in states of emergency, the timing seemed off. However, there is no doubt that a time and place are needed for those conversations.

The other camp included evacuees who said they were treated well and would use the assisted evacuation program again. Discussions will continue to occur in preparation for the next hurricane. The biggest fear for us all, however, is that many evacuees who returned weary, beleaguered and bleary-eyed from Gustav will choose to stay for the next storm.

There is work to do.

Sparkman said he’d do it again. Beverly Mitchell, the volunteer at City Hall, said the same.

Thank you to all the volunteers who helped make the Hurricane Gustav assisted evacuation program a success.
. . . . . . .
Robert X. Fogarty is Mayor Ray Nagin’s volunteer coordinator. He can be reached at rxfogarty@cityofno.com.

As a component of the party, we had attendees write their “love notes to New Orleans” or their “farewell messages to hurricane season.”

We think they turned out pretty well.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

In a city that celebrates everything, we think it’s appropriate to say thanks to a safe 2009 hurricane season.

New Orleans’ first “Bye Bye Hurricane Season” party.

Proceeds from the $20 tickets go to Evacuteer.org. The organization trains New Orleanians willing to help during a mandatory evacuation in the event of a Category 3 or higher storm.

Open bar courtesy of:

~Glazer’s
~NOLA brewing company
~Lazy Magnolia brewing company.

New Orleans food by Langenstein’s Supermarket

Venue courtesy of Lifestyle Revolution Group

Live Music:
My Name is John Michael
Stooges Brass Band

Buy your tickets here:
http://evacuteer.eventbrite.com/ or at the door.

“I am tremendously grateful for the recognition,” Fogarty said. “But, this couldn’t have been done without a lot of really smart people believing in the idea and helping make evacuteer.org become a reality.

To read the article:

http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A64079

Thanks to all the evacuteers who came out to scrape, prime and paint.