Our deployment is complete

We have produced our final 3W reports. The data has gone to many, many humanitarian organisations and will be used to assist and accelerate the coordination of humanitarian groups on the ground.

We have processed an extraordinary range of data streams over the past 12 days. We have geolocated pictures and messages of needs and offers of assistance, we have provided maps and tables ourselves and we have supported other organisations and groups to streamline their processes.

We have worked closely with many other groups throughout this deployment, we have been involved in very specific individual stories and we have been involved in the global humanitarian response.

And now we must stop.

It is hard because we know that the people of Nepal remain in crisis. It will take years to rebuild the buildings, the livelihood, the economies of the country and as someone wrote to me today “It just feels like it is so little help.” It is hard but it is the right thing to do.

Twelve days ago information about the situation in Nepal was scarce. We, along with other groups, were able to rapidly and radically improve the intelligence about what was happening and where.

Now there are agencies on the ground. KLL is doing extraordinary work, online, from right there in Kathmandu. They are up and running. They are beginning to coordinate effectively and help is truly arriving.

The people on the ground now have better information than we have.

It is time for us to leave.

This is our mission.

We respond quickly and then we hand over to people on the ground.

We can be quick because we have so many volunteers around the globe, because we work online and coordinate online but we are only one part of the global humanitarian response, of the hundreds and hundreds of organisations responding to the plight of the Nepali people.

It is our mission (along with other digital humanitarians) to provide information early on in a disaster. Because it is where the biggest gap is. When the information is fuzzy and people are struggling to get a grasp on what is going on.

It is our mission because we are all volunteers and we must look after ourselves and our families around us. We cannot keep running this fast for very long.

It is our mission because we will be needed elsewhere. This is our third deployment in less than two months. Right now there is a red alert for a tropical cyclone in the Pacific and we pray it changes course before its predicted landfall.

Be proud.

This has been one of the largest deployments we have worked on. It has combined hundreds of people across the world. And we have achieved amazing things. Things that genuinely could not have been achieved by any other organisation in the world right now. Things that may help countless people in ways that they will never realise.

And we have been just one strand of a colossal mobilisation of people and skills and knowledge. Working together. For the people of Nepal. Our brothers and sisters.

But this mission, for Nepal, right now, must end.

But it was not small.

And you should be extraordinarily proud of what you have achieved.

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