AidDrops

"Connectivity is the lifeblood of migration." - Deidre McKay, interviewee on an AidDrops podcast

This resource is a series of podcasts on SoundCloud featuring interviews conducted by Martin Dawes, a former BBC foreign correspondent and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) worker in Africa and South Asia who is part of the Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) Network. CDAC-N is a growing platform of more than 30 humanitarian, media development, social innovation, technology, and telecommunication organisations that are dedicated to saving lives and making aid more effective through communication and information exchange. Dawes's intention in conducting the interviews is to support his working with those in the CDAC Network who respond to disasters and who believe that listening to those affected is the right and effective way to go.

To cite only a few examples of the podcasts:

• "Phone Home - A Welfare Investment By Refugees": "Is it surprising that refugees and others on the move will spend more on connectivity, and even cut food to pay for mobiles? In this podcast with Martin Dawes, Deidre McKay, of Keele University [in the United Kingdom, or] UK, argues migrants see such spending as an investment they cannot afford not to make..." McKay, who is the author of books such as the January 2017 Archipelago of Care focusing on the experience of Filipino caregivers in London, UK, discusses the way in which mobile phone connectivity and use of social media to communicate with those "back home" is a way of investing in futures there; the flow of many kinds of information with family and friends is a kind of security network/blanket while also being a way of making linkages with fellow migrants in the new environment. After a disaster such as the 2014 typhoon (Hagupit) in the Philippines, the phone was a way for people to reach out to their family members working as fisherman to say, "we're okay; renew your contracts on the ships." In addition to helping them feel they exist and are alive, such communication can be an opening to a financial transaction (also evidenced by members of the diaspora sending money back home).
• In "Refugees and Life Saving Information - 'A Big Step Change Is Needed'", Daniel Bruce, the Chief Executive of Internews in Europe, talked with Martin Dawes about why world leaders in New York, United States (US) need to focus on communication. Bruce was speaking as the United Nations (UN) hosted a special session to focus on an estimated 65 million people displaced from their homes by conflict and insecurity. He says that while there are pockets of engagement which have helped people better protect themselves, getting the right message at the right time to hundreds of thousands of people making perilous journeys in many countries is an enormous challenge that still has not been fully addressed by humanitarian agencies.
• In "Where Are They Now? - Mobiles In Emergencies and for The SDGs", Martin Dawes speaks to Flowminder about what they describe as a "revolution" in emergency response and the potential for providing development answers. "In an aid emergency is not always clear where people have gone. Mobile data analysed by the organisation Flowminder is being used to tell responders where the need may be greatest. They are already being used to warn of disease threats and could be used to track progress on the Sustainable Development Goals....Flowminder first used mobile data in the Haiti earthquake, and has produced analysis for aid agencies since then for Bangladesh cyclone response and the Nepal earthquake. Its operations have expanded into identifying threats from diseases due to population movement, and solving development challenges. Professor Andy Tatem of Southampton University, who is a Director the Foundation and the WorldPop project, gave a lecture at the Royal Statistical Society in London earlier this year [2016] in which outlined how analysis from mobile usage, other 'big data' and more traditional information sources such as household surveys, could provide a basis for monitoring progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals."