[Battlemesh] Call for Refugee Camps

Thu May 5 11:03:35 UTC 2016

Hi Berat and all on the list,
my name is Valent Turkovic and I’m founder of MeshPoint [1] - Open
source wifi router for crisis situations.

We have connected over half a million people with their friends and
families during the refugee crisis in Croatia.

The project has been selected as winner of the Social Innovation award
organised by OECD in Croatia [2].

We have also helped humanitarian organizations to stay connected with
their teams that were involved and worked in the field. Just to name a
few; GreenPeace, Croatian Red Cross, IOM - International Organization
for Migration, JRS - Jesuit Refugee Service, UNHCR, HGSS - Croatian
Mountain Rescue Service, and lots of other smaller organizations.

We’ve talked extensively with all humanitarian organizations in the
field and what we heard was universal - there is a great need for
Internet connectivity and there are no solutions that meet
humanitarian organizations’ requirements during any type of crisis
events.

We would like to work with you since we have developed a solution how
to connect many people to wifi in a rapid and effective way through
dedicated software and hardware. It has proven to be effective when
working in crisis situations, especially when one needs to act fast.

We are also looking for grants and investors that would help us push
this idea from prototype to fully developed product, i.e. to the whole
system for managing large scale wifi networks during crisis events and
in refugee camps.

In addition, we could help and train the members of a certain
organization staff how to setup crisis communication network during
any type of crisis event.

We have partnered with wlan slovenija [3], Baranja Development Agency
of the Town of Beli Manastir [4], Subra Consulting LTD [5] and
Institute for Development of Advanced Applied Systems from Slovenia
[6] in order to gain expertise from different fields during
development, production and project management.

Please find more information on the product and our experience below,
especially how we used this product to tackle the refugee crisis in
the Balkans [7].

Our work was recognized by the media from all around the world [7]. We
joined TechFugees community [8] led by Mike Butcher from TechCrunch
and presented in London, Paris, Kuwait, Belgrade and to Prince
Charles, Prince of Wales [9].

We are looking forward working with you and making communication
issues during crisis situations a thing of the past.

Kind regards,
Valent Turkovic,
founder of MeshPoint.
Skype: valent.turkovic
Mobile: 00385913000606

[1] www.meshpoint.me
[2] http://www.oecd.org/investmentcompact/social-innovation-event-in-croatia.htm
[3] https://wlan-si.net/
[4] http://www.bara-bm.hr/
[5] http://subraconsulting.hr/
[6] http://irnas.eu/
[7] https://goo.gl/WllBkj
[8] http://techfugees.com/
[9] https://www.facebook.com/OtvorenaMreza/posts/1022096234529303

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 4:13 PM,  <berat at autistici.org> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> I want to make a call for the extraordinary situation of refugees who are
> waiting on the borders of Europe. As you know, thousands and thousands of
> people ran away from a war, they have lost their homes, their families,
> loved ones, they have lost their past and the only thing remains is the hope
> for having a future. Finding a safe place to raise their children and live a
> dignified life.
>
> But unfortunately the borders of Europe are closed and hundreds of thousands
> of refugees are blocked in makeshift refugee camps in Greece and Turkey for
> months(if not for more than one year) without knowing what will happen.
> Conditions in refugee camps are worst in every aspect; social, health,
> hygiene, food, and minimum living conditions that would be guaranteed by the
> basic human rights.
>
> Especially now in Idomeni(which is a small village on the border of
> Macedonia) there is a huge refugee camp with more than 10 thousand
> inhabitants who are seeking for an opportunity to reach other European
> countries. There are different humanitarian groups(also associations like
> Doctors Without Borders, UNCHR) from all over the Europe who brings
> materials/goods, help and solidarity.
>
> An Italian group called "Over The Fortress"[0][1] also organizes continuous
> voluntary groups for Idomeni. They basically monitor, do reports and support
> information/basic necessities to the camp. They ultimately reported the high
> necessity of Internet connection and electricity in the camp. One of the
> main reasons, the only way to do an asylum application is a Skype call with
> Athens, which is difficult in a place with very limited resources. Even
> though it is considered as a "cruel and senseless procedure."[2] by the
> activists (and ofcourse they're right) and it should be changed as petition
> demands[2], at the moment this is the only way to stay in Greece. Because
> the agreement between Turkey and UE aims to return them back to Turkey,
> which is definitely not the desire of refugees. On the other hand, ofcourse
> these people need to comunicate with the world outside the camp because many
> of them have parents/familiers in some other parts of the world.
>
> So, Over The Fortress brought a generator for eletricity, for light and
> materials for wifi. They made a contract with a Greece ISP which provides
> montlhy 500 Gigabit for 200€[3]. It will be active for 4 months and they
> launched a campaign to sustain the project[4]. But in an ultimate mail that
> arrived, they informed us that the volume of data acquired in the first
> instance is running out of and need to be increased. Sharing this campaign
> with your social networks could be helpful. It can be a temporary solution
> and at this point, contribute of wireless communities can be very important.
>
> The aim of this mail is informing and asking a contribute from wireless mesh
> network communuties about this situation. While we were discussing with the
> Ninux community, they suggested to write to ML Battlemesh, as this problem
> is not temporary and need to be considered in a larger scale. Idomeni is
> just an example and eventhough tomorrow borders had been open, this fluss of
> people would still need many kinds of support and the Internet is an
> important one. They also informed me that some communities like Freifunk,
> already had supported refugees in similar situations, so they have
> experience, which would be very precious to share with us. In the specific
> of Idomeni, contribute/support of Greece community would be very essential.
>
> I've never been in Idomeni(I myself am extra-comunitario in Italy, for some
> reasons i can't go) but to have more technical information from the camp,
> you can contact with Over The Fortress, as i know Disaster Tech Lab[5] has
> been there and tomorrow one of my friends from CMN Pisa will go to Idomeni
> with a group, for a week. In return, he can make a report about the ultimate
> situation. Unfortunately i can't neither participate to Battlemesh to
> discuss it face to face. I hope this mail can be a starting point to discuss
> what can communities do about this situation.
>
>
> Thanks for reading.
>
> Berat
>
>
> [0]
> http://www.meltingpot.org/spip.php?page=lang&lang=en#pagination_elenco_articoli
> [1]
> http://www.meltingpot.org/overthefortress-a-handover-to-the-border-of-fortress-Europe.html
> [2] https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/stop_skype_asylum_procedure
> [3]
> http://www.meltingpot.org/Sostieni-il-progetto-No-Border-Wi-Fi-della-campagna.html
> [only in italian]
> [4]
> https://www.produzionidalbasso.com/project/solidarity-campaign-overthefortress-support-migrants-journey-with-us/
> [5] http://disastertechlab.org/
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