[HOT] Nepal’s Aid System Is Broken. So These Lifesavers Hacked It

[Sam B]

Friends- looks like your efforts can use the information collected by this
Yellow House group:
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/nepal-earthquake-aid/

One week later, someone showed up: a raft guide named Megh Ale, who
operates an eco-resort on the Bhote Koshi. He arrived with some medical
supplies, volunteers, and not enough food. Upon seeing the extent of the
devastation, he approached the Deujas. Ale told the cousins to head to
Kathmandu and find a bed-and-breakfast called the Yellow House. Over the
past two weeks, as the government and large international NGOs have
struggled to deliver supplies in Nepal’s remote regions, the Yellow House
has emerged as the hub of a vibrant guerrilla aid operation run by a
handful of young people armed with little more than Facebook, open source
mapping technology, local knowledge, and some antiestablishment verve.

Unregistered, unlicensed, and nonexistent in official terms, the Yellow
House group is one of many ad hoc efforts that have cropped up to deliver
aid to some of the quake’s hardest-hit areas quickly and without much fuss.
Recently, the milieu at the Yellow House has expanded from urbane young
Nepalis and wide-eyed international travelers to include prominent NGOs
such as Team Rubicon, a group of US military vets sponsored by the Home
Depot. Even the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has
started delivering supplies through the group. But Sandesh and Dipak didn’t
know any of that, nor would they have particularly cared. They just needed
some rice and tarps, given the forthcoming monsoons. So they recruited two
of the town’s other young, strong men. Then they started walking down the
mountain.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/attachments/20150513/46b472af/attachment.html>