At the API hackathon at Drupalcon Denver in March, Chris Teitzel led a team working on Hope One Source, a Drupal-based tool for organizing humanitarian aid workers. Using Hope One Source, aid workers can mark their location and classify themselves across a variety of categories. Then an aid organization can post messages to those categories. This way, an aid organization in northern Haiti can deliver a message to all doctors near Cap Haitien.

Electricity and internet access in aid zones can be scarce unreliable, but mobile phones often work just fine. Chris and team saw an opportunity. They created Tropo Rules a plugin for Drupal’s rules engine that allows site administrators to build voice and SMS into their workflow. Events within Drupal can trigger a call or deliver an SMS. Now, when someone posts a message to Hope One Source, everyone who should see it gets a text message.

We thought it was a pretty nifty tool and awarded our hackathon prize of a Kindle Fire to the team. Chris told us he was teaming up with nonprofit humanitarian organization Hope with Love and heading to Haiti to test his tools with over 70 relief workers in northern Haiti at the clinics run by the Cap Haitien Health Network. He planned on taking the Kindle with him, where a grad student running the program would use it as a tablet to help with the organization.

Hope With Love is a 100% volunteer effort, and they’ve created Hope One Source with a team of three dedicated developers and the support of eight more during various phases of the project. The goal is to improve collaboration between aid workers, making sure that information is distributed in a timely manner. By doing so, Hope With Love aims to build more sustainable development and reduce the one-off efforts that are often seen in humanitarian work.

If you want to get involved with Hope With Love, contact founder Tim Underwood through their web site. To get involved with the development of Hope One Source, contact Chris Teitzel.

Related posts:

1. Tropo Gnomedex OpenGov Hackathon Winner named 2011 CFA Fellow
2. Drupal Camp Toronto Features Tropo-Powered VoIP Drupal
3. Tropo Powers PennApps Mobile Winner
4. Announcing the GnomeDex10 Open Government Hackathon
5. Announcing the 10.10.10 GWOBorg Hackathon

Tags: Denver, drupal, Drupalcon, Hackathon, humanitarian, winner

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