FAQ

  1. Is Haiti Connect a charity? Yes; Haiti Connect is a “Charitable Trust established by a Trust Deed”. However there is *no* legal framework in Ireland for the registration of charities. However the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, Charities Section maintains a database of organisations to which they have granted charitable tax exemption. “Haiti Connect” has applied for this tax exemption status and our application is currently being processed. The full guide document published by the Irish Revenue Commissioners can be downloaded here.
  2. Do you pay your volunteers? No, in the true meaning of the term volunteer our team members are unpaid. We do however pay their travel & other expenses.
  3. How do I volunteer? Just contact us via any of the means listed on our contact page.
  4. How many volunteers do you need? We plan to initially send a team of 5 engineers to Haiti. More might be send out as rotate teams.
  5. What skills do you require? We have a need for wifi specialists, network engineers, tower climbers, general comms engineers but also for a team EMT, cook, assistant team leader, security staff and general clerical staff. Not all of these need to be on the ground. Contact us for more details.
  6. Do you accept donations? Yes absolutely! At this point we most need financial donations to cover our expenses. You can do so by using the donations button at the top of this page. However we also welcome donations of telecoms, wifi & network equipment, camping gear, cooking gear, generators etc.
  7. What will happen with surplus equipment & other donations? We intend to use the experience gained together with any surplus equipment & funds after we finish our relief effort to establish a semi-permanent emergency communications support unit. All accounts will be made public.
  8. What is the time frame? We hope to have the first few people on the ground by mid February. The planned duration of the mission is 6 months as we plan to switch from emergency networks to providing a civilian & long term use network.
  9. Will you train people on the ground? Yes, we plan to train members of the local population to build & maintain the network to secure it’s long term viability.
  10. Will you be in competition with existing telecoms providers & ISP’s? No we won’t. We are working with a number of the local ISP’s to fill our backhaul needs. All of them have stated that they are happy to work with us. AS for Telco’s we do not intend to compete. We have reached out to the current incumbents and are happy to work with them also. Our involvement will be short term (6 months) after which we need a qualified party to hand our network over to.
  11. Is there really a need for wifi? Yes there is, there is was a severe lack of communications before the quake and this situation has only worsened. All parties in Haiti that we have spoken to (local government, NGO’s, individuals) have expressed the wish for us to come to Haiti and build the proposed network.
  12. Is Haiti Connect part of a larger organisation? No, we are an independent charity. However we are closely coordinating our work with NGO’s and aid organisations already in Haiti as well as local government and telcos & ISP’s. The list of organisations we are in contact with includes (but is not limited to): Nethope, Inveneo, International Red Cross, TSFI, SOS Journalistes MultiLink, UN, CDAC, World Food Program, Greater Washington Haiti Relief Commitee, Help Haiti Heal, Tropical Telecom, Teleco.
  13. What will happen to all equipment and donations if Haiti Connect is not successful? If the unlikely chance of Haiti Connect not being successful all equipment and funds will be donated to other organisations working towards a similar goal.

 

2 Responses

  1. Giordano - January 23, 2010

    Would love to help and can be on the ground from early march.
    Trying to spread the word as much as I can.
    What you are doing is FACTUAL, EFFECTIVE help. I will be in Barcelona for the GSMA Mobile Congress and that could be an important venue to raise even more support. Let me know how I can help in this.

    /Giordano

  2. News of Note — Community Edition « WISPA - April 30, 2010

    [...] PSA to the WISPA list asking for donating equipment. The Irish non-profit is relatively new and is not yet recognized as a charity by the Irish government. The company is using equipment from Aruba, OpenMesh, and [...]

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