User:Michael.kutch/The New Haiti Project

The New Haiti Project is a long range environment for reconstruction, started on Wednesday 27, 2010, using free social media on the World Wide Web, ignited by the Haiti earthquake in January. The New Haiti Project is Haitian born, unlike many activities that go to help disasters currently in the world. The New Haiti Project is a large scale knowledge and social environment for sustainability in a country where there is a vast need. The New Haiti Project is to graduate with all open technologies as they grow and are available on the Internet, along with the learning of the people in country. One key aspect of graduation is an increased use of systems thinking, and most importantly in the class rooms of Haiti.

Due to the status of Haiti internet availability after the earthquake, much of the web infrastructure was built in the United States by American members while communicating with those on the ground via Twitter, Facebook, email, and phone calls.

Google Wave
In the first few weeks of the project. Nearly all of the work and organization was done in Google Waves. The easy to use, feature-rich, simple collaboration tool helped nearly negate the issues with communicating over long distances and different time zones. Information and ideas could be shared and explored quickly with anyone able to share in the process. The instant messaging/email hybrid meant that conversation could be saved and reviewed later and that nearly any file could be shared and accessed by anyone. Many weeks after its first use, Google Wave continues to be the backbone for the project.

Twitter
From the very beginning of the response in Haiti Twitter played an important and vital role. The ability to send short text messages with speed and have them reach millions of people instantly was a tremendous asset. It was even used by the U.S. Military and many Non-Government Organizations as a way to quickly share information and bypass longer information sharing channels. In some cases, the location of a trapped person or persons was sent via Twitter and received by rescue teams and as such lives were saved. The New Haiti Project is taking advantage of Twitter to share news, send requests, and answer questions in real time and have them reach anyone who needs it. The New Haiti Project's feed is very frequently updated and it's staff takes great care to read over all messages.

Ning
The group first established its presence on the web via a Ning community. Here members could gather and disseminate information and soon dozens groups were made to deal with specific tenets of the organization's plans. Today, the community has more than 1,000 members and continues to grow.

Facebook
The project's use of Facebook has been more limited than that of Twitter and Ning but never-the-less does well in rounding out the project's online presence. Like Twitter, Facebook's many users mean that the mission and goals of the organization can be spread very far, very quickly.

The first days
Just after the earthquake two Haitian individuals immediately on their own took a humanitarian approach to things and began using Web 2.0 technologies, namely, Carel Pedre and Karl Jean-Jeune. While in Haiti they could not do a lot of work on the project immediately and because of this, initially most of the efforts were led by project members in the United States and Australia. Because of the difficulties in communication, much of the correspondence was done via text based services. Team members in the United States and Australia used products like Google Wave to share and draw out ideas. Most of the structure was established in this way.

Financials
The project started to earn money after it started.