IEEE and Haiti

20 January, 2010

By now many of you know of the decision of the IEEE to establish a Relief Fund for Haiti, and, most importantly, to match 1:1 the contributions of members and others who would donate to this Fund (the link is here: http://www.ieee.org/organizations/foundation/2010news.html#1). I made my own donation a very short time after the link was made live on the 19th of January. However, it turned out that I was not the first donor – two other members have already given by the time I logged in. By evening there were several scores of others who did the same, and it all happened even before the official announcement was made on the 20th – in an e-mail message to the membership from our President Pedro Ray.

The idea behind this Fund is to help Haiti in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake – and to focus help on rebuilding (and in many cases, building for the first time) infrastructure for support of education on the island. As President Ray explained in his announcement, disbursements from the Fund will be made in the form of grants to educational institutions and charitable organizations. Money will be used for educational services and infrastructure, and for classroom and laboratory supplies. We may also be able to support programs for retraining, and for professional activities necessary to help engineering and technology professionals in Haiti.

I believe this is the first time IEEE takes this kind of action, and it reflects the growing sentiment among members and volunteers that humanitarian activities ought to become more prominent in the direction of the Institute. Our members have been known to donate generously to humanitarian delivery of aid through a host of relief organizations, and quite a few have volunteered in the past to provide help on the ground. However, as IEEE we have not been deeply involved in disaster relief so far, and this is changing. In addition to establishing ways to react more quickly to future natural and human-made disasters, I expect that we will establish a registry (or join an existing registry) of those in the IEEE membership who are willing to help as volunteers in disaster-stricken areas. We have members with highly valuable practical expertise in areas such as power generation, distribution and delivery; and in building large scale communication networks. These are the experts and organizers that Haiti will need in the coming months, perhaps years, of recovery.

I am grateful to the volunteers and members of our staff who established the Fund – since we have not done this before in this manner and at this time scale, it was somewhat complicated to do. Similarly, I am deeply thankful to all donors, however large or small their contributions have been. The next step is to reach out to the relevant relief organizations, with some of which we have a history of cooperation, and to apply the Fund wisely and effectively to its purpose.

A lot of work lies ahead, but we have at least made the necessary first step.