Haitian aid effort needs solar chargers, water purification

While cash donations are the first request from aid groups responding to the deadly earthquake in Haiti, renewable energy can contribute to the relief and recovery efforts now underway.

The medical aid organisation Partners in Health, for example, is in desperate need of items like solar chargers and water purification technologies that don’t require electricity. Currently, a few solar-powered traffic lights are providing the only nighttime illumination in a few spots of Port-au-Prince, the Telegraph reports.

Read the post at TED to learn more.

The crowdsourcing site Ushahidi has also quickly begun building an online platform for Haiti. Ushahidi lets users submit reports on the location of crises in different countries, and its Haiti site is allowing people on the ground to pinpoint on a map specific places where help is immediately needed, such as extracting a survivor out of rubble.