Nov 17, 2017
Weekly Links — Laptop Humanitarians, Cash as Disaster Relief +How Refugee Camps Benefit Host Communities
A roundup of what we’re reading, watching, and listening to this week.
We throw around a lot of think pieces, podcasts, studies, and news in our Slack channels, and we wanted to open up the conversation to our readers as well. Please note that anything we post here is not an endorsement, we just hope these weekly digests will give you something to chew on over the weekend.
We’d love to hear from you! Feel free to start a discussion below, reach out to us on Twitter, or email us at airbel@rescue.org.
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+Can “Laptop Humanitarians” Solve History’s Largest Refugee Crisis? Digital social networks have opened up a myriad of opportunities to help refugees all over the globe. An article from BRIGHT Magazine looks into the rise of online volunteerism, including the challenges it presents. Here’s an excerpt: “For thousands of refugees like Mosawi, this has translated into direct aid from regular people — stay-at-home moms, real estate agents, dentists, hairdressers, marketing specialists — hailing from screens in Europe, the United States, Australia, and more.”
+How Refugee Camps Benefit Host Communities. Host communities often raise concerns that refugees threaten the country’s economy and safety, but there hasn’t been a lot of qualitative data around whether this concern is justified. A new paper looks at the effects of the local economy near the Kakuma Camp in northwestern Kenya, where refugees have increasingly crossed over from Somalia and South Sudan. They indicate that camps seem to have a positive effect on the local economy “through the availability of employment opportunities, and price changes in agricultural and livestock markets that encourage new production.”
+Rising to the Challenges in the Humanitarian Sector. The Thomson Reuters Foundation published a piece on the future direction of humanitarian aid. They claim that three majors shifts need to happen: 1) a deeper focus towards engaging local actors and aid; 2) increased community engagement and accountability; and 3) well-coordinated innovative partnerships with both the public and private sector.
+This Experiment Will Test If Giving Cash To Victims Is The Best Disaster Relief. GiveDirectly generally delivers cash transfers to the poorest in developing countries, but the non-profit launched a program for towns surrounding Houston, Texas devastated by Hurricane Harvey. As to why they decided to experiment domestically, COO Piali Mukhopadhyay stated, “We’re doing this for many of the same reasons we started GiveDirectly …we were frustrated with the inefficiency of existing options. It simply doesn’t make sense to truck in food donations from across the country when food is readily available in local stores. We looked for options to just send money when we started GiveDirectly and there were none; when we saw something similar in Houston, we thought, ‘This should be available.’ ”
