Being a humanitarian often means going against the flow. When everyone is trying to get out of a place affected by a natural disaster, conflict or pandemic – then we humanitarians work on getting ourselves in. Tomorrow I will be flying into Liberia, the country worst hit by the Ebola outbreak. But what is it…
NetHope recently launched an appeal to support its member organizations responding to the severe outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is unprecedented in terms of the number of cases, deaths and its geographical spread. NetHope’s main focus is to assist its NGO member organizations and other responders with…
We often hear the expression “this is a new chapter in your life”. And the truth is that amazing things will happen when you take this metaphor and apply it to your life. When you go through difficult times, you can leave them behind by simply starting a new chapter. You are going to be…
Your first reaction when a crisis strikes sets the path for how you deal with it moving forward. If your emotional reaction is one of anger, fear or despair, then you have to deal with that reaction carefully before you can start doing anything else. It is quite easy to let a number of emotions…
In the world of disaster response, we frequently experience examples of where the scale of the crisis exceeds the local ability to respond to the crisis, yet they don’t ask for help from outside. But this behavior is not limited to just disasters – it is something you see in companies and organizations all the…
Bringing development into the information age As part of my effort to slowly but surely get an Master’s degree, I am taking some interesting courses in Development Theories. One of the papers I got the opportunity to write for one of the courses focused on how the information technology revolution is breaking some of the…
Expanding our limits The emotion of fear is as old as mankind. It is what we experience as a response to physical and emotional danger. If we would not feel fear, then we would not protect ourselves from the threats around us. But fear can also be a very limiting emotion, because often it arises when…
It’s no secret that technology is constantly changing how we live our everyday lives. From how we shop, manage our finances and stay connected to friends and family, it plays a vital role. So it’s no surprise that technology is also changing the way we respond when disaster strikes. As we’ve seen most recently in…
Fellibylurinn Haiyan Fyrir okkur sem störfum við það að bregðast við náttúruhamförum, þá eru ákveðnar náttúruhamfarir sem við tölum um sem “stóru útköllin”. Flóðbylgjan mikla í SA-Asíu 2004 og jarðskjálftinn í Haiti eru gott dæmi um slíkar náttúruhamfarir. Fellibylurinn Haiyan verður eitt slíkra útkalla. Fyrir þá sem fjarri sitja getur verið erfitt að gera sér…
NetHope Situation Report 3 — 2013-11-11 Overall Situation Over 9.6 million people were affected when Typhoon Haiyan (local name Yolanda), one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded, crossed the Philippines on November 8th. The number of casualties is expected to be over 10,000 and humanitarian organizations say it will take months, if not years, to recover in…