ITDRC: Tiny Abundances Achieving Great Things

I’ve always admired Marnie Webb’s outlook on social change. In her TEDx Berkeley talk, we see why Marnie is the Chief Community Impact Officer of TechSoup Global: the first step to solving problems is finding an abundance of community will and resources.

We in the IT community constantly see excesses that might easily assist organizations and individuals working on long-term disaster relief in communities. These “easy asks” from our employers and friends often include the following:

• Licensing / SaaS subscriptions — after the software has created, keys are a virtually unlimited resource.
• Hardware — forklifted products usually still work just fine, and vendors can get a full write off on yesteryear's hardware that didn't sell.
• E-wasted computers -- Software such as Ubuntu or Neverware easily turns that yester-decade PC into a kiosk that a displaced person could use to fill out FEMA paperwork or find their next home.
• Supplies — that partially used box of cat 5 cable makes perfectly good patch cables for a temporary shelter.
• Tech services — SMEs often are often underutilized, bored, or feeling like their deep expertise “doesn’t matter”.
• Free time — tech workers often have unlimited vacation time, and when they’re not vacationing, they are often cyberloafing.
• Volunteer hours -- many companies in Silicon Valley (such as NetApp) allow their workers to volunteer up to 40 hours without counting against sick days or vacation.
• Matching programs — tech companies often donate money to hours or dollars that an employee donates to a qualified nonprofit.

One particular group has been making the most of these little extras over the last 10 years to achieve some truly amazing accomplishments -- Information Technology Disaster Resource Center (ITDRC).

Since 2008, ITDRC has grown from a small group of “idealistic volunteers” to a national disaster response organization with 1,000 credentialed volunteers across 10 geographical regions. Last year, ITDRC volunteers logged more than 40,000 hours responding to 15 major disasters; establishing 159 sites in 85 communities.

2017 was a tough year for natural disasters in the United States. Damages from hurricanes alone were over $300 billion dollars, but the human toll was devastating. ITDRC's mission is to enable survivors to communicate with loved ones and provide first responders with communications solutions.

After Maria struck the island of Puerto Rico, power and communications were down for the majority of the island. Fiber networks were thrashed and more than 90% of cell towers were offline. ITDRC received a request for assistance from the government of Puerto Rico and immediately dispatched a team of volunteers and equipment. Over the last 7 months, more than 50 technical volunteers from ITDRC have worked to establish temporary communications in 80 sites; connecting survivors, responders, and key critical sites. With the exception of Internet access from Dish Networks, a typical setup looked no different than your typical small office setup -- a Fortigate firewall, a Ruckus AP, a workstation, and a phone -- yet something so "small" made a big difference in an area like Puerto Rico.

ITDRC could not help communities in crisis without an outpouring of support from its industry and technology partners. Its lifeblood is the volunteers and product and service donations from socially responsible companies like Cisco, Dell, Dish Network, Google, HP, Ruckus (an Arris company), Fortinet, and support from Southwest Airlines.