This is the third post from the SNCR meeting today. It is on a Panel: Doing Good Around the World with ICT & Social Media Tools, moderated by SNCR Senior Fellow Katie Paine.

Randy Roberson – Humanitarian Emergency Logistics & Preparedness (H.E.L.P.) – They deal with disaster relief logistics on a global basis. Starvation and bad water are too things they fight. They provide mobile medical clinics. The Tsunami, earthquakes in Turkey, and Kosovo are some areas where they have worked. They also do remote diagnosis over the web (tele-medicine) with digital instruments on the ground that can show things like the inside of an ear drum or the sound of a lung in detail for a doctor to see half way around the world and devise treatment for the remote team to implement They recycle abandoned cargo containers as they are dumped rather than shipped back. They create mobile clinics with tele-medicine as a component. They also create public blogs with photos and video from sites and allow for donation tracking. They are looking for more web 2.0 ways to handle remote logistics and also plan to begin to use social media for fund raising.

Libby from the PR firm Edelman for the American Heart Association for their Go Red for Women Campaign spoke about the social media campaign. There were two studies, one was on the Go Red for Women web site. They are trying to raise awareness of the risks of heart disease for women. Now 80% of US adults search for health answers on-line and the majority are women. These high numbers prompted them to turn to a web 2.0 solution. They wanted the Go Red “brand” to have a separate identity from the AHA. Part of this plan was a highly interactive web site. There have been hundreds of thousands of downloads form the site. As a result, movement has occurred from 13% awareness to over 50% awareness in women of heart risks. They also have a “choose to move” blog.

AIDs Foundation of Chicago – Direct to Housing. – The speaker coordinates a team of housing advocates for low income AIDs victims who need housing. Need a better way to find resources that print materials. They created a web site. He did some research on what others were doing. Most had old out of date information and they were also not community friendly, only speaking to professionals. He wanted a web site that can be easily updated (www.direct2housing.org) inclusive, and is free. It says that it is “The only place you need to find the contact information, 
application process and eligibility criteria 
for Supportive Housing options 
in Metro Chicago.” It covers all at risk populations, such as domestic abuse victims, for the Chicago area. Programs themselves add and update information through their site. Now 276 programs participant so case workers and those in need can see what is available and what programs are full, stream lining the process. Housing programs get more visibility so it is a win-win. They have found that they have to overcome some misperceptions about false dangers from web participation to get participation from the agencies. AIDs Foundation of Chicago is a small local organization with small budgets so a web 2.0 solution is a good option. However, they can use more funding and want to get more private funders to recognize the value of web 2.0 and support these efforts. I found a link to the blog post on their web site, Local Advocates Blog From National Prevention Conference.