All Hands

I was confident the Internet could offer a solution: presenting the specific needs of disaster survivors to specific sources of relief. It’s targeted marketing—a commonly used and highly successful concept in business. I’d never seen it applied to disaster relief but I was sure it would be effective.

David Campbell’s personal and professional life changed course in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. A chance remark to a friend about the tragedy a week later led his companion to reveal that he had been dining on a terrace where, a week later, everyone on the same spot was killed. “In that moment,” Campbell remembers, “a faraway event was brought much closer.”

That meeting launched Campbell into action. After researching travel and lodging, he packed everything he thought he would need in a major disaster zone and boarded a plane to Thailand. But Campbell’s most important asset was his vast network of friends in the technology industry and his decades of experience in businesses management. His colleagues and friends wanted to help and he wanted to help them do it.

Campbell didn’t realize it at the time but he had stumbled on the key elements of what would become All Hands Volunteers, an entirely new kind of disaster relief organization: his own credibility, creative use of the Internet to make connections, and most importantly, the immeasurable power of “being there.” All Hands: The Evolution of a Volunteer-Powered Disaster Response Organization shares the story of how, over the past ten years, Campbell and thousands of dedicated volunteers have personally and profoundly impacted the lives of people reeling in the wake of natural disaster.