After my final class before spring break this past year of graduate school, the devastating Sendai earthquake hit Japan. My girlfriend delivered the news to me as I was out with some guys from school at Los Angeles’ downtown Artwalk. I told my buddy Evan about and he looked particularly concerned as he spent a few years living in Japan and still has friends over there.
The next day, Evan and I grabbed lunch at the Freebirds next to campus and he brought up an idea he had for setting up a website to help direct relief efforts from the school to Japan. An employee at the restaurant overheard us talking about it and raised concern for her friend in Japan. We alerted her to the Google Person Finder, a site designed to allow for check-ins on particular persons affected by such a disaster. We thought others will have similar worries and may just need a bit direction in how to learn more or send financial assistance, so right after lunch we headed over to his place to begin work on a way to help.
Given my experience in website design and development, I knew I could help on the technical end of setting up the website. WordPress was the perfect candidate CMS for such a site, and within an hour I had a basic website up and running. In the interest of time and expense, we chose to host the site on WordPress (rather than self-hosting). While this approach does have a few limitations in customization, it was perfectly suitable for such a focused informational site. I know simple domain names are important for branding and awareness campaigns, so while uscforjapan.wordpress.com may seem straight-forward, I wanted something even simpler. I registered the domain uscforjapan.com and adjusted the DNS settings through the registrar to forward users who typed in that domain to be pointed directly to the WordPress site. Simple domain, simple website setup. The web is a wonderful place in 2011 — a domain and professional-looking CMS-backed website can be setup in minutes. After developing the site architecturally, I worked on some graphics and copy for the static pages.
Evan and I created the website to help take the guesswork out of making a charitable donation for the victims of the earthquake. There are many groups out there claiming to help, but unfortunately every disaster reminds us there are a few nefarious ones out there who will only pocket the donation. We considered handling the money ourselves in the donation process, but were quickly dissuaded— it’s just a logistical mess and there are others who handle it far more efficiently than we ever could on such short notice. Evan and I did the research — we looked at chartiable groups out there and their track records in previous disasters — to narrow the selection for users in making a donation. We chose Doctors Without Borders are our primary group. As the uscforjapan.com website states:
We specifically chose DWB because of the fact that they are on the ground in Japan right now providing much-needed medical care in areas that were decimated by the earthquake. We were impressed with the organization due to their reputation for providing direct hands-on aid to communities in need.
The site has been up for months now and I have to hand it to Evan for taking on the majority of the content updates. That guy is a machine and his dedicated to the cause is admirable. There has even been a bit of media covereage about this project, you can find those links below. While recognition is always nice, I’m just happy the site has seen the traffic it has and hope it’s helped some people out there have an easier time in offering support to those in need.
USC’s ATVN: Student group ‘Fights On’ for Japan
Daily Trojan: Students aim to help Japan in time of need
The news cycle has mostly forgotten Japan, as expected so long after the earthquake, but the need for help remains there and across the world where disaster strikes. If you’d like to help make a difference though the wonderful work done by Doctors Without Borders in Japan or elsewhere, you can visit the USC for Japan site for more information.
















