Appalachia Relief Revenue

About Appalachia Relief

Appalachia Relief is a leader in crowdsourced mutual aid and disaster relief. Inspired by the success of our Hurricane Helene response in Appalachia, we provide tools and resources to help communities to replicate our effective, scalable model for disaster response. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, many people in Southern Appalachia struggled to access essential resources. Information was hard to find or not shared effectively. Communities were experiencing spotty cell and internet service, and social media didn't reach everyone. Gaps in communication slowed down relief and recovery efforts. A small group of volunteers mobilized to find solutions. What needed to be done to get critical information by and for impacted communities out there? We focused on technology for mutual aid, rapidly developing a lightweight website driven by Google Docs that could be easily accessed and navigated by folks with minimal cell and internet service. This also enabled us to lower the barriers for community members to contribute to our open, crowdsourced document -- if you could use a mouse and type, you could help keep information and resources flowing. We built a Discord-based system to quickly connect and onboard volunteers into our flexible, decentralized leadership structure. We also partnered with emerging organizations like R4Reach.org and WNC-Supply-Sites.com, who developed a decentralized online database to help WNC communities transport supplies to where they’re needed most. In the first six weeks, over 100,000 people in the Asheville, NC region accessed our platform for the critical information they needed about food, water, and supplies, shelter, transportation, disaster recovery resources, and more. As needs evolve, so do our efforts. Appalachia Relief continues to focus on human-centered, accessible, and replicable tech solutions for grassroots disaster relief -- in Southern Appalachia and beyond.

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