Empowering Crisis Response-Led Citizen Communities

Crisis times are characterized by a dynamically changing and evolving need set that should be evaluated and acted upon with the least amount of latency. Though the established practice of response to rescue and relief operations is largely institutionalized in norms and localized; there is a vast sea of surging goodwill and voluntary involvement that is available globally to be tapped into and channelized for maximum benefit in the initial hours and days of the crisis. This is made possible with the availability of real-time, collaborative communication platforms such as those facilitated by Facebook, Google and Twitter. They enable building and harnessing real-time communities as an amorphous force multiplier to collate, structure, disseminate, follow-through, and close the loop between on-ground and off-ground coordination on information, which aids both rescue as well relief operations of ground response organizations. At times of emergencies, amorphous online communities of citizens come into existence on their own, sharing a variety of skill sets to assist response, and contribute immensely to relief efforts during earthquakes, epidemics, floods, snow-storms and typhoons. Since the Haiti earthquake in 2010 to the most recent Ebola epidemic, online citizen communities have participated enthusiastically in the relief and rehabilitation process. This chapter draws from real world experience, as authors joined forces to set up JKFloodRelief.org initiative, to help the government machinery during floods in the state of Jammu & Kashmir (JK) in India in September 2014. The authors discuss the structure and nature of shared leadership in virtual teams, and benefits of channelizing global goodwill into a purposeful, and sustained effort to tide over the initial hours when continued flow of reliable information will help in designing a better response to the crisis. The authors discuss the lessons learned into 5 actionable dimensions: first, setting up response-led citizen communities with distributed leadership structure, in coordination with the on-ground teams. Second, communicating clearly and consistently about sourcing, structuring, and disseminating information for both internal team challenges, solutions, and plans with shared goal-preserving policies, as well as external public awareness. Third, developing partner ecosystem, where identifying, opening communication lines, and involving key stakeholders in community ecosystem - corporates, nonprofits, and government provide a thrust for large-scale timely response. Fourth, complementing and catalyzing offline efforts by providing a public outlet for accountability of the efforts, which recognizes actions in both off-ground and on-ground environments for volunteers, key stakeholders and citizens. Lastly, the fifth dimension is about follow-up & closure, with regrouping for assessing role, next steps, and proper acknowledgement of various stakeholders for a sustainable partnership model, in addition to communicating outcome of the efforts transparently with every stakeholder including citizen donors to ensure accountability. With the extensive description of each of these dimensions via narrative of experiences from the JKFloodRelief.org initiative, the authors aim to provide a structure of lessons learned that can help replicate such collaborative initiatives of citizens and organizations during crises across the world.