HandsUp
Designed and developped in Nepal Innovation Lab
HandsUp finds vulnerable communities that have been affected by crises and connect them with people and grassroots organisations that can help!
What is it?
HandsUp is an opensource web platform provided with a crisis coordination system to help a community recover from a natural disaster. Created in 2015, Neil, experimented software engineer for development programs, joined the adventure by the end of 2016.
The situation is as follows : in Nepal, every year, almost 1,000 people are killed or injured and over 15,500 houses are destroyed or damaged. Usually, the key challenge is to get the relevant and in real-time information to assist the affected population.
To organize informal crisis coordination, HandsUp is building a local network of “Requesters” and “Responders” to quickly identify the needs of vulnerable populations and match them with the right and cheaper “Responders”.
How do they interact with the workshop?
Nepal Innovation Lab mainly provides HandsUp with an office space and its network.
What are their next steps?
By the end of summer 2017, HandsUp plans to deploy its 1st minimum viable platform for small crisis (winterization, floods, landslides, …). Thanks to that first step, they’ll be able to iterate, improve the platform features and be ready to bring bigger crisis responses.
Once they’ll get fundings, the team will move to the Communitere Makerspace, as a coordination partner, and work with Naxa, a mapping partner.