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September 15, 2005
VoIP to the Rescue
To Our Inveneo Supporters:
On September 7th, Inveneo (www.inveneo.org) received a call for help to provide communications for the relief teams and local residents of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. With our experience in the developing world, we felt compelled to volunteer our skills to help rebuild communications in this hurricane-devastated area. Inveneo is now turning to you to make a special request for donations to support this important effort. Our goal is to raise $7,000 to support our team that is helping on the ground now.
The call for help came from CityTeam (www.cityteam.org), a national non-profit organization focused on homeless outreach and disaster relief. CityTeam requested access to the Internet for evacuees, now homeless residents and their own team.
By Monday September 12th, the Inveneo team arrived in Bay St. Louis and found complete destruction. For over 90 miles before they reached the coast, trees and rooftops littered the area. Abandoned cars and boats were tossed around. They set up camp behind a church destroyed by 18 foot high floodwaters, like many houses in the area which were completely washed away. There still is no electricity, only intermittent communication by cell phone, a strong positive military presence and a curfew after dark.
The Inveneo led team completed a site assessment, gained approval for their plan from the regional Emergency Operations Center and immediately began to put a system in place to establish telephone service and Internet access through the use of wireless, open source software and computer technologies.
By the end of this week, a communication center with Internet access and telephone service via Voice over IP will be available to help CityTeam and allow local residents to start to rebuild their lives by making phone calls to loved ones and accessing important Internet web sites including FEMA, American Red Cross, insurance providers and banks.
Inveneo is also cooperating with other volunteer groups to deploy a total of 1000 donated phones and 1000 donated PCs in the area over the next three weeks.
Many other individuals and organizations are supporting this effort by donating equipment and peoples' time including: Center for Neighborhood Technologies (www.cnt.org) Cisco (www.cisco.com) Digium (www.digium) - Mark Spencer and his team Intel (www.intel.com) ManyOneNetworks (www.manyone.net) Penguin (www.penguincomputing.com) Verso (www.verso.com) WISPA (www.wispa.org) - Mac Dearman and his team Wyse Technology (www.wyse.com)
We'd like to ask you to help Inveneo with a donation to offset our costs for travel, food, water, gas, transport, tools and supplies! So far we've received $600 and 100,000 air miles from generous supporters. Your help at any level can make a huge difference.
Donations can be made via PayPal through Inveneo's web site at (www.inveneo.org) or checks can be sent to Inveneo at 760 Market Street, Suite 866, San Francisco, CA 94112.
Thank you for your support.
Kristin
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Kristin Peterson
Co-Founder and Chair
Inveneo, A not-for-profit Corporation
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Read the latest on our Katrina
Response:
http://www.inveneo.org/?q=katrina
Posted by carl at September 15, 2005 10:47 AM