Our Story
Empowering ordinary people with open-source tech for crowdsourced mutual aid & disaster relief.
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. These 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 also developed a Discord ecosystem to rapidly connect and onboard volunteers into our flexible, decentralized leadership structure, and collaborated with emerging orgs like R4 and WNC Supply Sites, who were building critical systems and tech of their own — including a decentralized online database to enable WNC communities to dispatch and 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, open source tech for crowdsourced mutual aid and disaster relief — in Southern Appalachia and beyond.