A few months back one of our members at 1871, Tamara Habib from Firelily (a crowdfunding platform for donors who want to help with disasters), recommended I have one of her colleagues from Field Innovation Team do a workshop on disaster response.
Just before the workshop was scheduled to take place, the earthquake in Nepal hit. We quickly went from having a workshop on how to respond to disasters which had a goal of helping startups get creative in responding to a real world situation where help was needed.
Desi from Field Innovation Team began the workshop by discussing how her team is working with WomenLEAD, a Nepalese academy for young women to empower and amplify service in their communities for response and recovery efforts. They are also providing resources to relief organizations and would be collaborating with a Sherpa community in the remote mountains to assist with the rebuild after 90% of the homes in their town were destroyed. The workshop continued with a group discussion on the ways in which technology could be utilized to assist in the relief efforts and build a global network around creating social good.
The resulting workshop that took place was not one with the largest attendance, but may have been the one with the most global impact out of 1871 so far. Two of the people who attended the program, Pranav Satyal and Sweta Basmet, are originally from Nepal and ended up working with Desi to locally support the relief effort.
If you would like more information about what Desi and her team do, contact her at desiree@fieldinnovationteam.org
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1871 provides a number of workshops exclusively for our members to develop new skills. If you are interested in taking advantage of these educational opportunities, check out our membership page for more information on becoming an 1871 member. If you are interested in becoming a mentor at 1871, email programming@1871.com.
