While all of Humanity Road’s volunteers work hard to save lives, some of us have uniquely awesome humanitarian stories to share. In the monthly Volunteer Spotlight, you’ll hear some more about Humanity Road’s best!
Yogita Firoda just joined HR during the Nepal quake, but she quickly got hard at work sorting out disaster info that helped save Nepali lives. An ordinary Indian who works in IT, she stepped up and joined us and Kathmandu Living Labs at the right moment to help.
First, tell us (readers) about yourself, and what you’ve done day-to-day at HR.
I started with HR in April… so fairly new with HR. It all started with the Nepal earthquake. I have been involved with crisismapping. Generally, that means trawling the social media and identifying calls for help – logging them into the quakemap, verifying contacts and location, helping with statistics from the crisismap, updating status, etc.
I also sometimes followed up with reporters to verify the status of crisis points, and helped with some training of new volunteers who joined with Nepal efforts
So, how did you get started with Humanity Road?
When the Nepal incident happened – I was trying to help raise funds and resources, to send to a village in Rasuwa (a hard-hit Nepal district.) In an online article, I came across a reference to Humanity Road and the work they do. So I applied to volunteer, hoping to get involved with some disaster response & help in the future. Luckily for me, HR needed some urgent volunteers for the weekends, to help with urgent needs. And there I was, working with them before I got any introductions or training.
Thrown right into the deep end, eh?
Yes