How to Make Your Voice Heard During Hurricane Matthew
We live in a world of increasingly bad weather.
Rising tides, threatening cities. Warming oceans, creating more frequent and more dangerous cyclones. And, as the category four storm bearing down on Florida attests, hurricanes that are only getting stronger.
It’s an entirely different era.
It’s not if dangerous weather will arrive, it’s when.
But even though we’re faced with this clear and inclement danger, our communities and governments are rarely prepared to respond. We saw that during Katrina, when communication failures hindered response efforts. And we’ve seen that in countless natural and manmade disasters since.
Communication and planning can save lives. It’s no exaggeration: simply having the ability to share files during a disaster can mean the difference between life and death.
That’s where we come in
Relief organizations need tech solutions they can count on. That’s why, in 2014, we started Box.org to empower nonprofits and relief organizations with the ability to fulfill their missions through cloud technologies. Our company tries to help organizations connect with volunteer responders and collaborate with each other with improved file sharing and content management services.
The role of collaboration
But even the best cloud service in the world is insufficient on its own. We need partners to make sure life-saving organizations know our tools exist, know how to use them, and can afford the technologies that can save lives.
That’s why, last year, Box, Inc. launched a Clinton Global Initiative “Commitment to Action”
The Clinton Global Initiative, part of the Clinton Foundation, specializes in facilitating partnerships between organizations and in encouraging them to develop Commitments to Action that address major challenges.
After learning about the CGI community’s role in rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina and responding to the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, I got involved to find a way to connect Box with doers in the disaster relief field.
Today, our CGI Commitment to Action includes a network of partners including NetHope, Team Rubicon, and more. Our aim: to increase efficiency in the disaster response space by creating cloud-based content management platforms for relief organizations—to be provided pro bono or at little cost.
We believe that nonprofits should be able to migrate their content to cloud technologies that improve collaboration, data management and more—all while avoiding steep financial and time investments.
CGI’s Commitment to Action process was a great catalyst for our work and encouraged us to hold ourselves accountable. It also led us to form a coalition of cloud technology vendors—including DocuSign, Okta, Salesforce.org, Splunk, Tableau and Twilio—called ImpactCloud, which will help thousands of nonprofits elevate the scope of their impact beyond their previous limits.
As we post this article, Hurricane Matthew is bearing down on Florida, and Governor Rick Scott is calling for 1.5 million residents to evacuate.
We have a call, too. We are asking you to help us equip relief organizations with the technology they need to protect the public no matter what storm may come.
To learn more or get involved, visit ImpactCloud.org.
Members of the Clinton Global Initiative community and Clinton Foundation partners are joining the disaster response to Hurricane Matthew. For more information on how to help, read the Clinton Foundation’s post on Medium.