Typical Offers

Product type and typical scenarios

• Vehicles. Global Hand has been offered 4WD units, rescue boats, refuse trucks and other vehicles. A fire engine, placed on the site, was typical: email responses flooded in immediately and, within five minutes, an NGO secured it for shipment to an African project.
• Medical offers are one of the most common to appear, and disappear, on Global Hand. Medical provision comes in offers large and small: laboratory machinery, x-ray machines, operating theatre tables, hospital beds, surgical instruments, vitamins, injection supplies, medicines and wheelchairs. Six hours after 28 containers of medical supplies went on the website, in Holland, a US organisation had requested them and organised the freight to see them on their way to Africa.
• Relief supplies pour on to the site in the wake of any crisis. Some donors come to Global Hand directly. Others ring Oxfam, UNICEF, UNHCR, the DEC or Save the Children, with offers these organisations cannot use. They then refer them across to Global Hand. Examples include mosquito netting, lighting, cooking equipment, huge volumes of blankets, tents, tarpaulins, plastic sheeting, hygiene and related supplies. After a disaster, Global Hand is often inundated with offers and seeks to guide that process by an updated list of needed items on the website.
• Clothing and textiles offers frequent the site too. They are often in large quantities, direct from the manufacturer. They are not only sizeable, but, when the situation calls for it, can have cultural and climatic focus. Many thousands of garments have been offered through the site. In Serbia, a Red Cross unit, staffed by nationals, battles the unremitting cold of winter and the demoralisation of ethnic cleansing. In the UK, a company changes its logo and all stock with the former logo goes on Global Hand. They said, "Surely somewhere, someone in the world could use these. It would be such a shame to bin them…" The Red Cross unit received them with delight: they brought protection from the cold and, looking smart now in uniform, a boost to their morale.
• Furniture/furnishings: office furniture and equipment, household furniture of all types, carpeting, tiles, army beds, hospital beds, mattresses, etc. Often these basics can provide a capital injection – in kind, rather than in cash - that lessens the set up/renovation costs of NGOs. While basic in nature, therefore, they nonetheless prove highly valuable. 
• Construction equipment: compressors, drills, grinders, jacks, hand pumps, soldering irons, welders, transceivers, antennae, tuners, cables, adaptors, electrical cable, generators, hand tools, hard hats, safety goggles, prefabricated structures.
• Water: Water purification equipment, reverse osmosis equipment, tanks, quick assembly water pipe, 400L & 1000L water tans/bowsers, 5 gallon jerry cans, water stand pipes, water treatment plants. A series of these offers came through Global Hand, maximising the network’s value in linking international and national actors.
• Equipment provision. Teach a man to fish and, the adage has it, he eats for a lifetime. This is not a given, however, if that man needs tools to exercise his trade. Generators, boats even fishing line can be offered through Global Hand. When commercial quantities of fishing line were offered through Global Hand, there was considerable interest from struggling coastline communities and it was finally distributed among fishing villages in India.
• Education provision: Text books, stationery and teaching supplies, classroom furniture and equipment, learning toys, special needs equipment. Educational projects in African and Eastern European locations, in particular, have benefited from shipments through Global Hand.
• Food. Global Hand regularly receives offers of food in non-perishable form: cans, packets or sacks. Some of it is culture sensitive – Hallal approved, for example, during recent disasters. Some of it generic: sugar, milk powder, soup, dried products, etc. Early in Global Hand’s history, 1,000 pallets of noodles were made available and distributed through one NGO to 6 or so others in as many countries. The noodles were ideal: light weight, reconstituted with water, appealing to a breadth of cultures.

Also:

• Money offers are newer for us, but, without doubt, find a ready audience. A Rotarian doctor in the United States wanted to give $8,000 to the Pakistan relief effort. Through Global Hand, he approached an NGO active in response and saw his money release two containers of urgently needed medical, hygiene and clothing supplies.
• Freight is also newer for us, but there is no shortage of interest, particularly in a post-disaster scenario when airlines routinely approach us offering freight capacity. In the wake of the Pakistan earthquake, 20 tonnes of air freight was made available, without cost, for dispatch of urgently needed supplies.

User stories

1. Water

Scottish Water, a major supplier of water in its country, offered equipment: a purification plant, bowsers, pumps, hoses and jerry cans.

Water bowsers, several hundred jerry cans, pumps and hoses were used to set up a “water programme” in Northern Uganda. They facilitated water access for IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps housing those impacted by the rebel conflict in the area. The bowsers provided storage for entire camps. The jerry cans facilitated access and storage for individuals. Further equipment was fitted on to a donated 4 x 4 vehicle to facilitate water availability between camps.  We were delighted to see this provision because, prior to this time, local reports indicated that some individuals were spending 14 hours per day obtaining water. 

A large water purification plant from Scottish Water also went to Indonesia to provide drinking water for a region whose water supply was wiped out by the tragedy of the tsunami. Scottish Water partnered with Babcock Engineering Services and LCH Generators for the project, with Babcock providing the Reverse Osmosis (RO) plant, Scottish Water the storage tanks and LCH Generators Ltd the generators needed to power the water purification unit.

2. Medical

Hospital beds were donated with the intent, originally, of their being allocated for disaster response. Provision of this kind is not often appropriate, however, when regions have seen their infrastructure devastated and are struggling to get it back up and running again. Nobody in the Global Hand community wanted these for disaster response, therefore, however, so Global Hand approached the hospital to ask if we could refer the beds to a broader range of actors, both development and disaster. The donor agreed and they were used in a Moldovian medical clinic with outmoded furnishings.

             

These user stories are typical in several senses. They illustrate:

• the ability to connect parties who need one another for the completion of a project.
• the effectiveness of a broader constituency in re-directing aid that is unsuitable for one context so that it can be placed more appropriately.

3. Clothing/Shelter

During the response to 2005’s Pakistan earthquake, a Japanese manufacturer - Fast Retailing - offered 10,000 newly manufactured fleece winter coats to the World Economic Forum's Disaster Resource Network. These were not a match for DRN’s programmes and so were offered to the Global Hand community. Consultation ensued regarding the question of cultural appropriateness, since the jackets were of Western design. Rescue workers on the ground, however, advised that, so long as the basic dress code worn by those affected was traditional in nature, jackets of this kind were a very acceptable “add on” for needed warmth. The donors were then hooked up to a supply chain, through the Global Hand network, to see them delivered through Karachi to the earthquake victims. The manufacturers were aware that it would assist all parties if they were to provide for the cost of the freight. They chose to do so, providing a very helpful value added.