A Marketplace for Aid
The high holidays just ended, a time for reflection. It was two years ago today on Rosh Hashanah when I visited the Syrian families squatting on the outskirts of Béziers, France for the first time. Another mother at my kids’ school had asked me if I wanted to join her the day before…members of her mosque were going to bring food and see if they needed anything. I had hesitated for a moment — typically I set aside the Jewish new year to go to services, or to celebrate with family, but I figured that a mitzvah, a good deed, was a logical way to kick off the year. Little did I know that two years later I’d be running a technology company to connect people all over the world to more efficiently support refugees and displaced people.
But first, back to the squats in Béziers and the forty plus Syrians living there. The answer was yes. Yes indeed they had needs. So many needs in fact that I and the other volunteers went into a mad spin of organizing. Diapers, size 2 and 4. A refrigerator. A translator. Weekly food deliveries. A ride to the midwife. The list went on and on. Back in 2015 there was tremendous goodwill, and we found that the offers of help, the donations, came flooding in. But nowhere could I find a way to easily communicate these needs with all the offers.
Same day delivery for urgently needed items?
I moved to France from the birthplace of online commerce (strategically located north of California, south of Canada.) I’m used to wishlists, wedding registries, baby registries, and an app for pretty much anything you could think of. I jumped online and quickly found that, in fact, when it comes to humanitarian aid, the online resources are few and far between. In fact, I can get soup delivered to a sick friend in Seattle within hours, I can get order a sleeping bag for my sister in Brooklyn. I can schedule an oil-change online. But I can’t buy diapers for a refugee baby in Greece. Why not?
We have marketplaces for virtually everything nowadays. For micro-components. For practicing Japanese. For finding love. We have marketplaces because they work. They’re efficient. Isn’t it about time we had a marketplace to match the urgent needs of people torn from their homes by war, by floods, by famine with the millions of us who want to help, but don’t know how?
Learning as we go from our “Virtual Containers”
At NeedsList, not everything works perfectly. We’re new. We’re learning. But these are just a few examples that help us see glimmers of light at the end the ramp-up tunnel.
- In August, A Drop in the Ocean’s warehouse in Skaramangas was desperate for summer clothes for camp residents. Donors bought 50 pairs online over a weekend. We ordered them from our favorite Greek supplier on a Monday morning, and that evening received confirmation of delivery.
- Likewise, for World Humanitarian Day we ran a Back to School campaign and donors around the world purchased notebooks and pens and backpacks for refugee children in Athens. These arrived in time for the new school year to Zaatar’s office where they were distributed to vulnerable families living in their shelter. My personal favorite aspect of this story? The majority of these school supplies were purchased as birthday gifts in response to Oliver, age 4 in London, who decided he wanted his party guests to buy gifts for someone who needed it more. Check him out:
- The day before yesterday we ordered a set of fifty microSD cards from our new electronics supplier in Northern Greece. We hadn’t even paid the invoice when we heard they had arrived in Chios, where they will be loaded with videos of asylum rights information by Refucomm volunteers. and distributed to refugees who continue to arrive on the shores of Lesvos and other Greek islands. Now this Greek supplier, Nettop, will be providing us with all the items needed by new Maker Spaces and FabLabs emerging across Greece to support vulnerable populations with a place to create, explore, code, and build job readiness skills.
When Delivery Goes Amiss
I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about our failures too. Like the boxers that somehow got stuck in a delivery warehouse for weeks in Northern Greece, traveling back down from Ioannina to Thessaloniki before finally making it to their final destination at Filipiada to be distributed residents of the camp there by Refugee Support Greece. Fortunately, they finally made it (and even Amazon has its off-days, right?)
New beginnings, new strategies.
The new year, in the Jewish tradition is a time of sweetness. As we tremor in the face of hurricane after earthquake after threats of nuclear attacks, the world hasn’t felt so sweet lately.
But the new year is also a time for new beginnings. It’s time to think strategically, efficiently, and bring resources to addressing one of the most outdated systems out there — humanitarian aid.
Want to learn more about our work, meet needs, or see if you can create a NeedsList? Get in touch!
