 I recently helped the organization GiveDirectly to establish their aid program to people hit by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica. This is a smart and new-ish NGO that provides direct cash support to people in poverty settings. They are expanding this low cost and speedy response into disaster zones like the recent mega storm to hit Jamaica. My long time friend and colleague Leith Baker, who heads GiveDirectly’s humanitarian products, invited me to work together in western Jamaica to assess the situation, design the operation, and start sending money to those who need it most. It was also a great pleasure to work with and get to know GiveDirectly’s Camille Raguin, and Julien Devos who also deployed on the response (check out Camille’s excellent post about the deployment). The cash payments we arranged will help people get emergency supplies like tarps, buy phone credit so they can communicate, and eventually repair their storm damaged homes.   Instead of trying to guess what these people might need most, we find storm-affected people, and give them the opportunity to register themselves for help. They use their own cell phones to apply for the aid, and then after verification, we send them money via Western Union so they can buy things they need immediately. Rather than waiting for slower-moving relief supplies to arrive, people know exactly what they need, and can buy it right away in their local market with the money that we send. Hurricane Mellisa was one of the largest storms on record with 220 mph winds plowing directly into this small island with rickety infrastructure and low lying coastal geography. The devastation was immense. The storm toppled many trees and blasted off every leaf from every tree in the impact zone. It looked as if a fast moving fire had made the vegetation disappear, or that a giant had meticulously sandblasted the once lush tropical forest leaving only grey and brown sprigs. The prevalent roof structure in this part of western Jamaica was rough cut wooden beams with corrugated tin roofing. The wind inferno tore these roofs away, scattering the twisted metal across the countryside. Most houses made of cement walls were spared, but the gusts flattened any structure with wooden walls. It felt like driving through the footprints and trail of a destructive and fast moving dragon. The work days were intense. We were entering unknown territory where there were reports of looting, gang activity and other criminality following the storm. We had to understand and accept a certain level of security risk to enter the area to do our jobs. Simply understanding and experiencing the aftermath of the disaster was physically and emotionally taxing: On the physical side: We worked 15 hour days for the first week of the operation. Each day we would spend part of the morning pouring over maps of the impacted areas from organizations like MapAction, and crunching storm damage reports and poverty data with satellite imagery. The other part of the day we’d pile into a rented diesel Mitsubishi L200 four wheel drive pickup truck. We would drive into the storm’s impact zone to assess the situation with our own eyes. The long days included about 8 of those hours in the truck moving over rough terrain, dodging downed electric wires and detouring through landslides. During our on-the-ground assessment, we were looking for the level of cell phone coverage, the damage to the houses & infrastructure, and the pre-existing poverty and needs levels of people living in the path of this storm. The emotional strain on us as helpers in this scenario was heavy. We would stop to talk to survivors to try to understand their needs, and the conversations were difficult. One man talked about his plans to try to rebuild his dwelling. Behind us, his water logged powertools, refrigerators and ruined mattresses lay strewn around the wreckage of his home. The emotion was acute as he talked about the destruction to his house and the area. Power will likely be out for months. The small convenience store that he managed near the roadside was completely flattened with its contents a total loss. We heard dozens of stories like this as we moved through the impact zone. Each interaction required empathy and tact to get the info we needed while displaying compassion and connection to the people we were there to serve. Here are the most important mindsets, strategies and tactics that we deployed as international aid workers to best help the people of Jamaica with our program. These are high performance techniques drawn from the disciplines military, entrepreneurship and endurance sports training and applied to the discipline of international disaster response. Mindsets Our key mindset was to focus on preparation, not planning. There was no way to adequately plan for what the disaster response would look like from a programming perspective (what we would specifically do to help) and from an operational perspective (where we would stay, what we would eat, how we would get around). We answered these questions through taking our best guess and then moving on to the next action. Doing something that seems right, then doing the next thing in line with that direction. The way to manage in a situation like this is to prepare rather than plan. Preparation means three main things to me: Learning in advance, calibration to previous experience and having non-negotiables in place. Learning in advance - We had to learn quickly about the hurricane and about Jamaica in the 24 hours that we had between the decision to deploy and the plane landing in Kingston. This means AI summaries of the main information sources (World Fact Book, Economist, New York Times, Humanitarian Data Exchange, MapAction and the UN). Learning in advance gives you an understanding of the place, the economy, the politics, the disaster and the people that live there. You’ll never learn everything in advance but you have a broad idea of what is going on. This helps you make better decisions when you arrive about how to move, where to go, and how to help. Calibration to previous experience - Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman writes that “intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.” When we experience something either directly or read about it, our brains file the experience away. Later when we encounter something that looks like this experience, we jump to subconscious conclusions called intuition. Your intuition can be either wrong or right in this new disaster situation, so being aware of that process and examining with “slow thinking” can help you make the right call. Have you been to a Caribbean island before? Have you lived through a disaster like the pandemic, a flood or a hurricane? How does that previous experience compare to what is happening now in Jamaica? What lessons can you draw from that experience to help read your mindset to quickly understand what is happening and take the correct action to help? How might your intuition be wrong? Non-negotiables in place - Preparing a list of things that you will not do under any circumstance helps prepare you for on the fly decision making. For Jamaica, my non-negotiable was to never knowingly drive or walk into an area that was defined as insecure or unsafe by our driver, other aid workers or the government, and to never drive at night. This meant that the area of Black River near the epicenter of the hurricane’s landfall was off limits. When we were deciding where to drive and who to talk to, we were able to rule out that area. This allowed us to quickly hone in on areas that were within our ‘go’ areas. The storm had hit these areas equally hard, and they needed our help. The drive at night redline meant that we had to plan our day and ensure a turnaround time that got us back to our safe accommodation before nightfall. Strategies Sprint and recover - We do our best work when we avoid the gray zone where we are not really productive, but also not recovering our energy and focus. Working hard and intensely, followed by a recovery period is the best way to get anything done. In the disaster zone, this means sprints of several days. While we did attempt to sleep 8 hours each night, the first week of work was in full focus mode for 15 hours per day. After this big push we took a design day back at the hotel to digest what we had learned, plan, write and diagram how we would give the cash assistance. The longer recovery period happened after I finished my 9 day deployment with a period of rest and less work when back at home after the response. Tactics Dialing in the gear - This is a potentially endless topic. Perhaps this will be a deeper dive at a later time. However, here are the functions of gear that made in on the trip:
Prioritizing sleep - Sleep is a powerful and magic recovery tool. It is a performance accelerator. It is seductive to cut this out in favor of more work hours. This always backfires and sets up a whiplash effect that will eventually win out over all your best intentions. In this response we slept 8 hours per night and it made a massively positive difference in our ability to understand what was going on, think clearly, and work quickly to set up registration and move the money to people who needed it most. Starlink is a game changer - We used Leith’s Starlink Mini portable satellite device almost constantly while awake. We set up the device on the windshield of our Mitsubishi pickup truck. This allowed us to do video calls, navigate with online maps, create documents and spreadsheets in real time and adjust targeting information. We did all this while moving through the disaster zone where cell coverage and electric services were intermittent or completely out of service. We would prop up the Starlink in the hotel’s outdoor courtyard and finish the work day with a planning session and set of calls. Having lived and worked in low or no cell coverage areas across the world, this was a complete game changer. The broadband access at all times accelerated our productivity, security and response velocity. This is now a crucial part of my daily work kit. Making it work for you To my aid worker friends, what does it take for you to respond in a disaster zone? Drop a line and let me know. The Jamaica program has concluded but there are many other worthy GiveDirectly programs for your donations. You can directly participate in this relief effort and have money flow directly to storm impacted people by donating at this link on the GiveDirectly website. After learning and carrying out their approach on the ground, I’m a big believer in the speed and effectiveness of this type of cash aid. Happy Trails 
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