Relief 2.0 in Japan: 3 Paths to Effective Disaster Response and Recovery

The main focus of our Relief 2.0 work in Japan revolves around 3 main initiatives:

• Relief 2.0 is focused on running the last mile in disaster response by deploying small independent teams of local stakeholders and volunteers in the field, supported by mobile technologies and social networks to fill in the gaps left by the slow response of top-down hierarchies and bureaucracy.
• Relief Enterprise focuses on turning disaster survivors in entrepreneurs before they are turned into refugees by the conventional relief system, leveraging their actual skills, knowledge, experience and fields of work and trade, identifying synergies and opportunities for collaboration among them.
• Relief B2B connects businesses affected by disaster with healthy same-trade businesses in other regions so that they can collaborate in getting the affected businesses back on track and to reopen.

We are currently collaborating with the Grameen Creative Lab @ Kyushu University and will formally announce the above initiatives in Japan at the TEDxEarthquake 9.0 conference curated by Carlos Miranda Levy (me) and kindly hosted and supported by the Grameen Lab at Kyushu University, Fukuoka on Sunday April 10, 2011.

In order to execute the Relief 2.0 component and prepare the Relief Enterprise and Relief B2B initiative we quickly deployed up North, setting up camp in Ishinomaki, delivering supplies, visiting shelters for assessment and interviewing survivors for needs and the discovery and understanding of efficient opportunities and paths to recovery.

• A detailed log and day by day field report is available on Robin Low's blog.
• Photos are available on Flickr.

We are now seeking for partners, businesses interested in collaborating with other businesses from their same trade and affected businesses in the field which can benefit from such collaboration to get back on track.

We sincerely believe in our motto:

NEVER HELP:
enable, engage, empower and connect.

Disasters create survivors, not refugees. It's the conventional relief system which creates refugees by breaking the spirits of survivors, treating them without dignity, restricting their mobility, failing to engage them and making them wait aimlessly to be fed and to have decisions made for them.

Every small business or shop that reopens is less people standing in line for food, less burden for the government and more wealth starting to be generated and distributed. Same with each new business or service created or provided by the disaster survivors.