humanitarian.info

Earlier this year, I had lunch with Paul Margie, Senior Director for Technology Partnerships at the UN Foundation, and all round smart fellow. Apart from the fact that the food was excellent (The Tabard Inn, recommended), we swapped some interesting thoughts on emergency telecommunications response from the contrasting UN and NGO perspectives.

I was pleased to hear that the UNF, in partnership with Vodafone, was planning to provide increasing support for Telecoms sans Frontieres. The official announcement was made yesterday, with $2m over a 5-year period to provide a Rapid Response capacity. Smart money – more than the obvious benefits to communication in the field, this is a good example of private-public partnership.

Hopefully this will go beyond just philanthropy, though. Andrew Dunnett, Director of the Vodafone Group Foundation, is quoted as saying that Vodafone will share not just cash, but “our expertise and our technology”.  So hopefully this will lead to some interesting experiments in new technology that will have a longer-term benefit for the humanitarian community.