Refugees can search 20 web sites for lost relatives and still miss their entry on the 21st web site. There is a need to combine all the refugee data from big databases like Red Cross, large posting forums like Craigslist and many other sources on the web. The Katrina PeopleFinder Project seeks to create a single repository combining as many sources of refugee data as possible from all over the web without interrupting existing momentum.

We need help for both regular people and software engineers.
Everybody is critical to building a central repository of ALL the refugee records we can find on the web. The Social Source Foundation, CivicSpace Labs and Salesforce.com Foundation are coordinating hundreds of people and organizations, including Craigslist and Earthlink.

Please consider giving us just an hour of you your time to do volunteer data entry. The PeopleFinder Project is seeking volunteers in four primary areas:

(1) Creating a technology specification for easily exchanging refugee information. A volunteer effort is working to assist online databases in implementing the specification.
Volunteer here (techies): http://www.omidyar.net/group/katrinarefugee/
news/1/

(2) Coordinating volunteers that are writing software that takes information from online databases and putting it into a central database provided by Salesforce.com Foundation.
Volunteer here (software engineers): http://www.omidyar.net/group/ katrinarefugee/news/2/

(3) Organizing a massively parallel volunteer data entry project to enter refugee data posted to online bullitin boards into a central database by hand.
Volunteer here (regular people): http://www.omidyar.net/group/ katrinarefugee/news/0/

(4) Market the Katrina PeopleFinder Project and recruit volunteers.
Volunteer here (marketing folks): http://www.omidyar.net/group/ katrinarefugee/news/3/


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David Geilhufe
dgeilhufe /socialsourcefoundation /org
IM on yahoo: dgeilhufe /yahoo /com

KATRINA PEOPLEFINDER PROJECT
Social Source Foundation, CivicSpace Labs and Salesforce.com
Foundation are coordinating an open community effort to aggregate
refugee data from accross the web.
Current information: http://blog.social-source.com/