The Sahana Software Foundation has received a $10,000 Catalyst Grant from IBM. This grant is a direct extension of IBM’s Celebration of Service contribution to the Sahana Software Foundation that provided several translations of Sahana Eden using IBM’s n.Fluent system.

The money is to be put towards delivering one or more SahanaCamps in Latin America that will train local resources to support the use of Sahana Eden software to help government and humanitarian agencies better cope with disasters. This will be done in conjunction with a local IBM effort to complete country-specific localizations based on the translations provided by IBM Research’s n.Fluent system and country-specific deployment features that comes out of the SahanaCamps.  We are seeking additional funding to be able to extend this program to two or three countries in Latin America.

This grant provides us with an invaluable opportunity to make a difference in a region where we have already identified needs and requirements where Sahana can assist, but we have not previously had the resources to engage directly by having persons on the ground to work with technologists and humanitarian organizations to understand their specific needs and requirements, and to provide training in Sahana Eden software. We are excited about this new opportunity to assist a region that suffers from chronic disasters.

Over the next few weeks, we will identify the best dates and locations to hold a SahanaCamp and to secure the best mix of technical, government and humanitarian agency participation.  We are targeting initially the countries of Colombia, Brazil and Chile.

The Sahana Software Foundation is extremely grateful to IBM for this donation, and for the hard work of Jim Laredo from IBM’s Watson Research Center, who has been organizing the IBM contributions in the area of translations and localizations during the Centennial Celebration of Service, and who submitted and sponsored the proposal for this program internally, and to Rebecca Curzon of IBM’s Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, who has been Sahana’s lead champion within IBM for many years.