In Times of Crisis, Call the Technologists

Vivian Graubard and Kavi Harshawat wrote for Slate's Future Tense about the need for technologists in times of crisis:

In late June, we sat in the respite center of the Catholic Charities Rio Grande Valley in McAllen, Texas, staring at the television we had just installed on the wall. A bus schedule, which we had just automated so it was no longer a painstaking hand-done process, appeared on the screen and transformed the television into a departure board for the volunteers and 9,800 migrants in the system. Mounting a television on one nonprofit’s wall during the family separation crisis at the border seemed like a small act, but it made a difference.

As news of family separations at the border began to spread throughout the country in early May 2018, the crisis brought a flood of people looking to help. RAICES, a nonprofit in Texas, received more than $20 million in donations through the largest Facebook fundraiser in history. Calls went out on Twitter for translators who spoke Spanish and the Mayan languages of Mam, Q’eqchi’, and K’iche’, and attorneys who could provide legal aid to migrants. Volunteers descended upon border cities at the request of nonprofits. Even now, as hundreds of children remain separated, volunteers are still arriving.