Find Ali is dedicated to the memory of Ali Abdallah, a homeless man who passed away 40 days ago. Ali had no roof over his head, no one looking after him and died due to the cold wave that hit Lebanon earlier this year. In order to honor his memory, the [FindAli] website was initiated to locate homeless people and try to help them before it’s too late.
Here’s how the website works (Taken from HummusForThought.com ):
1- Go to the project’s website
2- Click on ‘Submit a report’
3- You’ll be redirected to a page that has many boxes.Report Title (e.g.: homeless man found on bliss street),
Description (e.g.: include all available info),
You can modify the date and time (it starts automatically at your current time)
Choose appropriate Category: Medicine, Blankets & Clothes, Education, Food, Shelter, Unknown, Urgent, Trusted Reports
What does He/She looks like?
Location Name. Here you can also use the map to pinpoint the exact location
News Source Link: Was he/she reported in the news?
External Video Link: Was he/she recorded on video?
Upload Photos: Do you have his/her photo?
Submit
You can get e-mail alerts (enter your e-mail here and confirm the link they’ll send you) of homeless people as soon as they are spotted and you can choose how you wish to help (medicine, shelter, food etc.)The project also has its own Facebook page and allows iPhone and Android users to install the Ushahidi application.
Picture via HumansOfLebanon
I’ve been following up on that various initiatives that were suggested after Ali’s death and I believe this is the best one I heard about so far. Nevertheless, I think it will be very challenging to maintain unless someone’s doing the proper follow-up and people are submitting useful reports. For example (see below screenshot) this kind of description “Man digging in trash: Older man, gray hair, shaddy clothing. not really a beard but not freshly shaved. on the short side” is not helpful at all.
In all cases, I ask everyone to give this initiative a try, submit useful reports of homeless people and try to offer help regularly. If the government and the authorities don’t care about the poor and homeless, we have a duty as citizens to try and help as much as possible.
via Gino