thanks so much for having me out here
today what I wanted to do is talk to you
a little bit about disasters and the
state of our world and it’s it’s pretty
alarming that’s what’s going on did you
know that there’s a hundred and sixty
five million people in our world today
that are declared in a state of need did
you know that 165 million a decade ago
that number was half so in the last ten
years the amount of people that are
either displaced by war become refugees
or affected by natural disasters has
doubled so you can see this alarming
trend where the caseload and the number
of people that need our help has gone up
does anyone in the room think that the
amount of money available to help those
people has doubled in the last decade
yeah absolutely not so what we have is
we have this horrible graph of people in
need going this way and money going this
way and there’s only one way in order to
make that graph kind of meet in order to
get a nexus on that graph and that is if
we innovate in the way that we deliver
aid to folks in the way that we help
people to lower the cost of a
transaction because if we don’t come up
with innovative solutions we’re not
gonna reach 40 50 percent of these folks
that’s 50 million people that don’t get
any assistance at all if we don’t start
doing things differently so that’s
that’s the main underlying point for my
talk today there’s gonna be a lot of
folks left behind globally now before I
get into this I want you to understand
that what we do as an agency is we
respond to disasters and war zones all
around the world you know you saw in the
little video before that we’ve been out
over a hundred and eighty eight missions
well that was in the last year we’re up
over 193 now in 67 countries and we’ve
delivered aid to about three million
folks right has anyone ever been in a
disaster zone like do you understand
what it’s like to be in a disaster zone
you know like let’s look at the haiti
earthquake for a second so this is in
january of 2010
it’s a 45-second event and that
45-second event wipes out a hundred and
seventy percent of the gross domestic
product of a country it basically wipes
out two years of its economy and it
affects three million people it
displaces a million people it kills a
quarter of a million people this is a
45-second event that’s a little bit
longer than I just spent explaining what
the event was the ground shakes the
building’s come down this is what it
looks like it’s a little graphic so if
you don’t like graphic things now is the
time to either close your eyes for a bit
but this is what disaster looks like
[Music]
so you have absolute chaos yes said you
got a million 1.4 million people that
are displaced they no longer have homes
three million are affected the quarter
million are dead and about 400,000 are
injured before the earthquake medical
care and hospital availability in Haiti
wasn’t that great so an incidents like
this really devastates the community
right
and here we respond we come in with
field hospitals we’re up and running in
62 hours and then the problem is a lot
of the folks that we pull from the
rubble or are pulled from the rubble and
are brought to us but they have
fractures but because it’s been two days
two-and-a-half days – we can get set up
a lot of these simple fractures turn
into amputations right because of the
time to get them care at the time that
they have to wait so it’s horrible now
if you look at an event like this in
Haiti it’s kind of indicative of a lot
of the events that occur in the world
right and again I talked about this
hundred and sixty-five million folks in
need now as an agency at Global medic we
really try to be innovative you know the
difference between us and every other
agency out there it can be kind of
summed up in three ways number one we
have professional rescuers so I’m a
paramedic you know I work the city
streets as a medic our other folks that
volunteer for us they’re either medics
or police officers or firefighters or
doctors or surgeons or nurses and every
one of us is a true professional and we
all volunteer our time we don’t get paid
we just go out and do the work
whether that’s treating patients or
getting folks clean drinking water or
providing you know specialty rescue
services the second difference with us
is because we’re all these professional
rescuers that volunteer is all the money
that comes in to us actually goes into
the program as opposed to things like
overhead or administration or lobbying
or advocacy it’s all about getting aid
to people in need in that you know
that’s critical like filling those gaps
and then the third thing that’s
different about us
is we’re constantly innovating we’re
constantly trying to come up with new
ways on how to deliver aid so the
purpose of my talk today is to talk to
you about some of the different things
that we do this is Ecuador back in April
of 2016 there is a massive earthquake
and as you can see there’s a rubble pile
buildings are down and the problem is
7,000 buildings are down and anywhere
around the world there might be six to
ten true dig teams that can save your
life
okay so if you’re trapped under the
rubble of the building and you were
really trapped there’s only gonna be
Fairfax County from America task force
one from America a German team a
Colombian team a French team of Spanish
a Japanese team these are the only folks
that can actually save you right but if
there’s 7,000 buildings I guarantee you
at every one of those buildings there’s
somebody saying my mother’s in there and
I can hear her she might be in there but
they can’t hear her and you can’t put
six teams onto 7,000 buildings because
remember there’s a time frame to save
the life how long do you think you’re
gonna survive trapped under the rubble a
day two three four five tops right so
when you when you have at least
variables of very few teams lots of
people trapped so many thousands of
buildings and then it’s clock that
you’re working against well what do we
do we could bring in search-and-rescue
dogs to sniff on the rubble pile which
we do to try and find a survivor
well we bring this little machine in I
guess you can see it up here
this is ground-penetrating radar and we
zap into the rubble pile to locate a
heartbeat and the actual movement of
chest rise fall so I can tell you based
on this machine if there’s actually a
survivor in that building so what does
that mean if I locate a survivor I
notify the incident command who notifies
a dig team who comes out does a double
verification with a dog right and they
start working here so rather than
working blind right they have another
tool now what we’re working
as we’re working on putting these
sensors onto drones so I can fly over
the top of the building because imagine
how hard it is to get in here and place
these different sensors in to locate the
heart the heartbeat going right and
remember we’ve only got three or four
days to go and do this so we’ve got we
lose that first day getting there
because we’re never in the country when
the disaster happens we’re always
responding so our kits got to be ready
to go then we got to get the next flight
in whether it’s commercial or military
or cargo or whoever’s getting us in
there and then we got to hit the ground
running so often we’re sleeping under
the trucks and we’re not really sleeping
in those first four days because we’re
running these arms but do you see the
type of innovation that this is this
could be the difference in life or death
to the folks that are trapped and when
we got in there the very first
algorithmic question that we asked was
where were people affected right what
time did this happen this is a four
o’clock in the afternoon incident right
or sorry this is a nine o’clock at night
incident so we know they’re not gonna be
in a bank right because the banks are
closed we know they’re gonna be in their
residences and then we took all the 911
calls because folks were calling 9-1-1
call saying this is the RTA a family I’m
trapped this is where I live
problem is the whole neighborhood is
down so now how do we find where their
home was right
so we’re cross-referencing these three
different pieces of data and then we’re
zapping the area with our
ground-penetrating radar and if we find
that heartbeat then the dig team comes
in now this is the hardest part the dig
team now takes over and we move on to
the next building to try and find the
next survivor you know when as a medic
that doesn’t seem normal to me because I
to call start to finish right I take
care of the patient get him to the
hospital and that’s when it ends not
okay
notify the next person that come in and
dig but that’s ground-penetrating radar
innovative interesting save some lives
let’s talk about a different way to
build homes so this is a compressed
earth block technology machine so when
typhoon Haiyan hit hit the Philippines
and it absolutely it was in the path of
25 million people it was incredible the
number of people that had to move and
the folks they got out of the way but
all these homes were destroyed many
people were killed and the folks that
were living
the coastline they lost everything so we
had to move them off the coastline and
start building them houses well the
problem is if you start building people
houses you know the global community
comes in and they build these crappy
wooden huts that are just gonna blow get
blown away by the next storm and we say
oh you’re only gonna live in these homes
for just a few months or another year
until we can build you a permanent home
but that just never happens right
because donors get tired they don’t want
to keep putting money into a crisis they
kind of forget about it it’s out of the
news it’s not that interesting and we
were saying look that’s just wrong
so why don’t we come in and build people
permanent homes in a different way and
that the neat disruption about this
machine is rather than coming in and
buying bricks that are you know made in
China or made in some country where the
kids are making the bricks and the
bricks aren’t that good quality and of
course when you’re trying to rebuild you
have a huge amount of supply right or
sorry very little supply and a huge
amount of demand so whenever you have
that when you ever you have too many
people wanting a product usually the
products not well made right
so rather than facing all those
obstacles we said let’s be disruptors
and do it a different way we said let’s
bring this machine in let’s hire every
single person in the village that’s
effective right and get them running
that machine when they run the machine
they throw dirt in we put a little bit
of cement and every eight seconds you
saw that machine churn out these blocks
and now we’re building homes from these
blocks so it means the family actually
gets to help build their home right so
they’re actually buying into this
they’re they’re they’re putting their
sweat equity in and they know that
they’re building their own home with
what we’re doing
right you can train young people into
new jobs you teach them how to be Masons
you teach them how to make bricks and
blocks you teach them how to actually
build right it’s it’s incredible and the
greatest disruption is the money instead
of the money going from governments or
donors to us to a big company right the
money goes to people because I’m not
gonna just have people work for free
we’re gonna pay folks and if you’re in a
disaster zone and you don’t have a job
or you don’t have a livelihood that’s
the worst thing but if you have a job
right eight to nine people rely on you
which means everybody in this front row
if I hired you to do the work everybody
in that front row is now getting some
form of economic benefit whether that’s
the food that she provides or the
shelter that she provides and it’s a
better way of getting aid to people
through that livelihood
you know through that distribution of
cash for work right and then the output
product is a permanent home and if you
look at those homes they’re incredible
and we can build them cheaper than the
local you know then the local model is
right and then the best part is it’s all
made with local product right that’s
local dirt local cement the windows are
local the doors are local you know and
then when you realize that some of the
people that leave your program after
building these houses now have jobs and
construction companies you feel really
good about that but this is a great
disruptive model in moving money away
from the big corporation into the hands
of folks and delivering a great product
which is a permanent home let’s talk
about blast film if we were affected by
this blast and we had lots of windows
around us we’d be in a world of trouble
because the glass will come in and break
the shards will you know cut us to
pieces and you know there’ll be a heavy
death toll this is the daily life for
folks in Ukraine and when we put this
film on look at what happens the blasts
still occurs the window is gonna break
but it’s not gonna come flying in and
kill folks right so where do we do this
we’re actually putting this in the
schools and the hospitals in the nursing
homes along the line of contact in
Ukraine does anyone remember that
there’s a war going on in Ukraine and
the western part aside the eastern part
of that country Russia’s annexed a part
of an area Russia’s an excreme’ and you
get a bunch of informal soldiers right
usually drunk don’t really know what
they’re doing with equipment and 70 to
80 times a day they fire a mortar they
don’t even know where they’re firing
them and sometimes those mortars land in
a schoolyard sometimes they land in
front of a hospital and when they land
even if they don’t kill anyone who heard
anybody where they land
that concussive blast those waves that
come flying off they shatter windows and
they hurt and kill people can you
imagine if you’re a mom and you send
your kid to school you you want every
one of your mom’s when they send you
school they know you’re safe in school
school and safe they’re just words that
go together in Ukraine that’s not the
case and I could change that word
Ukraine and I can put in so many
different country names and still have
the same statement schools in Iraq
schools in Nigeria schools in South
Sudan right school you know there’s so
many countries that I can insert that
Yemen right where you have this instance
where the vulnerable are affected let’s
face it kids are vulnerable the elderly
are vulnerable people in hospitals are
vulnerable so we have a duty to protect
them so this technology this is not new
but the rich use it bankers our
embassies right they all use this
technology when we had the the g8 a few
years ago in Toronto and you remember
that every bank put this on their
windows all these commercial merchants
put this on their windows this type of
film so the technologies out there and
what we did was we said look we’re gonna
repurpose an innovative technological
idea and put it to the poor put it to
folks that are vulnerable put it to
folks that they can’t afford to have
this stuff on their own that didn’t even
know that it existed so do you see
innovation it’s not always about
creating a new idea sometimes it’s about
repurposing where you put the idea right
and this is what we do in Ukraine and
now mum knows that where kid goes to
school she’s safe let’s talk about some
of the tougher things
post-disaster like one of the things
that you absolutely need after a
disaster is access to clean water any
one of you in this room if you need a
drink of water what do you do you’re
going right to the fountain it’s it’s
within 25 steps for you right if you’re
coming into a disaster zone and you
don’t have clean drinking water this is
what’s gonna happen you’re gonna get
sick a waterborne disease will make you
ill now if you’re a young person
say you’re under the age of five or
you’re an older person let’s say over
the age of 70 you’re probably gonna be
immunocompromised right you’re probably
not going to be able to fight off
disease well which means the incidence
of death amongst young people or the
elderly in a disaster zone is really
high so that earthquake in Haiti
remember I said it killed a quarter
million people do you know how many more
people are gonna die immediately after
that earthquake because they don’t have
clean water it seems like ours don’t
come in and avert that secondary
calamity we make that initial death toll
look minut did you know there’s 1.2
million cases of cholera in haiti six
months after that earthquake 1.2 million
six times the number of people who died
in that quake and that is even with
everybody in the world coming in and
offering solutions and trying to get
folks clean water if you removed all the
responders of the world coming in and
you can get that clean water out how
much does that cholera outbreak grow
right and cholera it kills kids it’s
awful so this little thing that I showed
you is us coming up with innovative
technology pretty simple stuff but the
way we package it is different so
there’s a a UV light there’s a carbon
filter a sediment filter and it’s small
kits and with one of these small kits we
can show up and plug into the river and
then pull that crappy dirty contaminated
water out and people will line up and
come get clean water from us and that
difference that instant difference that
we could set up in an hour within an
hour of landing could very well save the
lives of everybody in that village
because they’re not gonna get sick
that’s how much of a difference that
makes Hurricane Matthew last year in
Haiti we landed on a Thursday night
Friday morning we were up into the zone
because we had to drive there and an
hour after we were in the city six of
these units are up and running and each
one of these units you know there’s ten
twenty thousand people a day can get
clean water that’s a lot of water
flowing but this is a good start right
this is what we call point of source
purification what’s better is when you
start pure
flying at point-of-use which means you
can give you can give mum the
opportunity to clean drinking water to
provide it at home so here’s our
volunteers in our warehouse and I fully
expect every one of you to sign up and
volunteer for us and come out and
assemble these kits so I’m being serious
with that so you can see these
volunteers they’re assembling bucket
systems right and then here’s one of our
people in Myanmar right teaching mum how
to assemble these units and this is the
coolest thing about innovation and
technology it does not need to be new
and cutting-edge this type of ceramic
filter has been around since the time of
the caveman this is all technology and
you can see it’s two buckets there’s a
ceramic candle filters between the
buckets and it’s gravity fed there’s no
electricity there’s no moving parts
there’s nothing to really break if one
of the candles breaks you put a plug in
the other three filters work and what it
means is the family gets clean water for
about a year okay these kits are 40
bucks 50 bucks let’s say by the time we
actually get them to everybody you know
between the air freight and the ground
truck and get them out maybe 60 dollars
well if the family is six people and I
told you that after any crisis or any
warzone I could get people clean water
for ten dollars for one year would you
not think that’s good value for money
well this is what we do and I remember
because lots of people come to us and
say Raul this is the greatest products
and sliced bread and we just challenge
it and say no it’s not it’s terrible
with this one when we first started
trialing them we did it in Haiti and
then we put two of the most austere
environments in the world Yemen and
Somalia these wars in Yemen and Somalia
have gone on forever they’re very hard
to reach people it’s a very difficult
situation and these worked there so
we’ve been using them for a few years
and what we do is we get volunteers to
come in and do the assembly and do the
drilling so we lower the cost of
transaction because when we can save
money on these units it means we can get
more units out to people and we’ve
gotten
seventy eighty thousand units out now in
the last few years to thirteen countries
Thursday we just had another five
hundred and twelve units fly in the air
to Istanbul this morning it landed on
the border and it’s being taken over in
a few hours to Syria to remember all
those folks that were affected by that
chemical weapons attack a couple weeks
back well we talked about that chemical
weapons attack and we talked about
America firing missiles we don’t talk
about the sixty-two thousand people that
fled those cities sixty-two thousand
people that fled with nothing that don’t
have clean water and now we’ve got about
five hundred of those families that
we’re gonna give this solution to you
still a lot more people in need but this
solution this type of solution is the
answer right so innovation doesn’t
always have to be new it doesn’t always
have to be purpose directed because
these ceramic filters have been used
everywhere else you can go to Canadian
Tire your parents might even buy these
ceramic filters for your cottage or your
house and it’s repurposed for this and
if you see that little guy there this
guy’s in Myanmar when it fluttered out
terribly a couple years ago and he now
has clean water and he’s not gonna die
as something as stupid as typhoid or
cholera it’s incredible and ten bucks a
year it’s an unbelievable thing I’m talk
to you about one other innovation a few
years ago remember I was telling you
about Haiti when we when we went into
Haiti we said look our convoys driving
and we’re trying to reach where we’re
going and we couldn’t get there cuz the
buildings were down and bodies were
everywhere and tires were burning and we
just thought if we had a little drone
above us that could guide us right we
would have gotten there faster and if we
got there faster we would’ve been set up
faster so those than hundreds of people
that we’re waiting for fractures to be
sent the turnitin amputations well maybe
we would have been able to set their
fractures so we started talking about
using drones back then in 2010 and the
technology has gotten better and better
and better so we launched a program
called rescue a V so rescue and then
unmanned aerial vehicle right and the
idea is can we do four things with
drones number one can we deliver aid to
people that are either cut off by war or
cut off by the mudslide or what have you
right number two can we take hundreds of
thousands of photos
and make those photos cross stitch them
into emergency maps and with those
emergency maps can we do comprehensive
damage assessments right number three
can we provide what’s called situational
awareness which means can I tell you
what bridge is out can I tell you what
Road is out there is nothing worse than
driving six hours with your convoy
trying to reach 20,000 people to get
them food or clean water or set up your
hospital and you come across a landslide
and you can’t get past it but if you had
a drone up you knew the landslide was
there and you wouldn’t have gone down
that road right and number four can I
support search-and-rescue functions
right so we launched this program and we
you know very very challenging program
very innovative very new and this little
tiny company I don’t know if you’ve ever
heard of them Google they decided that
we should win a google.org impact
Challenge award because we’re using
technology for good so with their money
we’ve now run drone programs in nine
countries back in the Caribbean last
year we had three multiple drone
programs going where we were mapping out
you know exactly where the problems were
we were doing the situational awareness
we were supporting the search-and-rescue
teams we’ve done it in Colombia we’ve
done in Ecuador it’s a very very
exciting program the methodology is
simple if I get you better information
as an emergency manager you’ll make
better decisions and the impact of your
decisions means that aid is delivered
more efficiently to more people doesn’t
that make sense
better information better decisions and
the output it’s not a test score right
the output is more aid to more people
which means saving more lives right like
it’s it’s one of the coolest programs
that we run so coming back to the
beginning I told you that you know
there’s 165 million people in need and
the money to take the caseload is so big
compared to the money available to help
these folks and programs like we just
launched here the four or five that I
just talked about they lower the cost of
transaction they make a delivery more
effective and they lower the cost of
actually helping people and it’s
innovation that’s all
so my challenge to you is this I want
you to volunteer for us I want you to
help us I want you to do simple things
like follow us on social media talk
about what we do talk about the problems
that we’re trying to fix and as you get
older and as you try to decide the
things that you want to do in life
whether you want to be the rock star or
the rocket scientist or the pharmacist
like whatever it is you want to do think
outside the box and think of some of the
ways in which the things that you’re
doing can be repurposed and changed for
us to help other people and if you
innovate
we’ll keep innovating and we’ll keep
delivering that aid thank you [Applause]
today what I wanted to do is talk to you
a little bit about disasters and the
state of our world and it’s it’s pretty
alarming that’s what’s going on did you
know that there’s a hundred and sixty
five million people in our world today
that are declared in a state of need did
you know that 165 million a decade ago
that number was half so in the last ten
years the amount of people that are
either displaced by war become refugees
or affected by natural disasters has
doubled so you can see this alarming
trend where the caseload and the number
of people that need our help has gone up
does anyone in the room think that the
amount of money available to help those
people has doubled in the last decade
yeah absolutely not so what we have is
we have this horrible graph of people in
need going this way and money going this
way and there’s only one way in order to
make that graph kind of meet in order to
get a nexus on that graph and that is if
we innovate in the way that we deliver
aid to folks in the way that we help
people to lower the cost of a
transaction because if we don’t come up
with innovative solutions we’re not
gonna reach 40 50 percent of these folks
that’s 50 million people that don’t get
any assistance at all if we don’t start
doing things differently so that’s
that’s the main underlying point for my
talk today there’s gonna be a lot of
folks left behind globally now before I
get into this I want you to understand
that what we do as an agency is we
respond to disasters and war zones all
around the world you know you saw in the
little video before that we’ve been out
over a hundred and eighty eight missions
well that was in the last year we’re up
over 193 now in 67 countries and we’ve
delivered aid to about three million
folks right has anyone ever been in a
disaster zone like do you understand
what it’s like to be in a disaster zone
you know like let’s look at the haiti
earthquake for a second so this is in
january of 2010
it’s a 45-second event and that
45-second event wipes out a hundred and
seventy percent of the gross domestic
product of a country it basically wipes
out two years of its economy and it
affects three million people it
displaces a million people it kills a
quarter of a million people this is a
45-second event that’s a little bit
longer than I just spent explaining what
the event was the ground shakes the
building’s come down this is what it
looks like it’s a little graphic so if
you don’t like graphic things now is the
time to either close your eyes for a bit
but this is what disaster looks like
[Music]
so you have absolute chaos yes said you
got a million 1.4 million people that
are displaced they no longer have homes
three million are affected the quarter
million are dead and about 400,000 are
injured before the earthquake medical
care and hospital availability in Haiti
wasn’t that great so an incidents like
this really devastates the community
right
and here we respond we come in with
field hospitals we’re up and running in
62 hours and then the problem is a lot
of the folks that we pull from the
rubble or are pulled from the rubble and
are brought to us but they have
fractures but because it’s been two days
two-and-a-half days – we can get set up
a lot of these simple fractures turn
into amputations right because of the
time to get them care at the time that
they have to wait so it’s horrible now
if you look at an event like this in
Haiti it’s kind of indicative of a lot
of the events that occur in the world
right and again I talked about this
hundred and sixty-five million folks in
need now as an agency at Global medic we
really try to be innovative you know the
difference between us and every other
agency out there it can be kind of
summed up in three ways number one we
have professional rescuers so I’m a
paramedic you know I work the city
streets as a medic our other folks that
volunteer for us they’re either medics
or police officers or firefighters or
doctors or surgeons or nurses and every
one of us is a true professional and we
all volunteer our time we don’t get paid
we just go out and do the work
whether that’s treating patients or
getting folks clean drinking water or
providing you know specialty rescue
services the second difference with us
is because we’re all these professional
rescuers that volunteer is all the money
that comes in to us actually goes into
the program as opposed to things like
overhead or administration or lobbying
or advocacy it’s all about getting aid
to people in need in that you know
that’s critical like filling those gaps
and then the third thing that’s
different about us
is we’re constantly innovating we’re
constantly trying to come up with new
ways on how to deliver aid so the
purpose of my talk today is to talk to
you about some of the different things
that we do this is Ecuador back in April
of 2016 there is a massive earthquake
and as you can see there’s a rubble pile
buildings are down and the problem is
7,000 buildings are down and anywhere
around the world there might be six to
ten true dig teams that can save your
life
okay so if you’re trapped under the
rubble of the building and you were
really trapped there’s only gonna be
Fairfax County from America task force
one from America a German team a
Colombian team a French team of Spanish
a Japanese team these are the only folks
that can actually save you right but if
there’s 7,000 buildings I guarantee you
at every one of those buildings there’s
somebody saying my mother’s in there and
I can hear her she might be in there but
they can’t hear her and you can’t put
six teams onto 7,000 buildings because
remember there’s a time frame to save
the life how long do you think you’re
gonna survive trapped under the rubble a
day two three four five tops right so
when you when you have at least
variables of very few teams lots of
people trapped so many thousands of
buildings and then it’s clock that
you’re working against well what do we
do we could bring in search-and-rescue
dogs to sniff on the rubble pile which
we do to try and find a survivor
well we bring this little machine in I
guess you can see it up here
this is ground-penetrating radar and we
zap into the rubble pile to locate a
heartbeat and the actual movement of
chest rise fall so I can tell you based
on this machine if there’s actually a
survivor in that building so what does
that mean if I locate a survivor I
notify the incident command who notifies
a dig team who comes out does a double
verification with a dog right and they
start working here so rather than
working blind right they have another
tool now what we’re working
as we’re working on putting these
sensors onto drones so I can fly over
the top of the building because imagine
how hard it is to get in here and place
these different sensors in to locate the
heart the heartbeat going right and
remember we’ve only got three or four
days to go and do this so we’ve got we
lose that first day getting there
because we’re never in the country when
the disaster happens we’re always
responding so our kits got to be ready
to go then we got to get the next flight
in whether it’s commercial or military
or cargo or whoever’s getting us in
there and then we got to hit the ground
running so often we’re sleeping under
the trucks and we’re not really sleeping
in those first four days because we’re
running these arms but do you see the
type of innovation that this is this
could be the difference in life or death
to the folks that are trapped and when
we got in there the very first
algorithmic question that we asked was
where were people affected right what
time did this happen this is a four
o’clock in the afternoon incident right
or sorry this is a nine o’clock at night
incident so we know they’re not gonna be
in a bank right because the banks are
closed we know they’re gonna be in their
residences and then we took all the 911
calls because folks were calling 9-1-1
call saying this is the RTA a family I’m
trapped this is where I live
problem is the whole neighborhood is
down so now how do we find where their
home was right
so we’re cross-referencing these three
different pieces of data and then we’re
zapping the area with our
ground-penetrating radar and if we find
that heartbeat then the dig team comes
in now this is the hardest part the dig
team now takes over and we move on to
the next building to try and find the
next survivor you know when as a medic
that doesn’t seem normal to me because I
to call start to finish right I take
care of the patient get him to the
hospital and that’s when it ends not
okay
notify the next person that come in and
dig but that’s ground-penetrating radar
innovative interesting save some lives
let’s talk about a different way to
build homes so this is a compressed
earth block technology machine so when
typhoon Haiyan hit hit the Philippines
and it absolutely it was in the path of
25 million people it was incredible the
number of people that had to move and
the folks they got out of the way but
all these homes were destroyed many
people were killed and the folks that
were living
the coastline they lost everything so we
had to move them off the coastline and
start building them houses well the
problem is if you start building people
houses you know the global community
comes in and they build these crappy
wooden huts that are just gonna blow get
blown away by the next storm and we say
oh you’re only gonna live in these homes
for just a few months or another year
until we can build you a permanent home
but that just never happens right
because donors get tired they don’t want
to keep putting money into a crisis they
kind of forget about it it’s out of the
news it’s not that interesting and we
were saying look that’s just wrong
so why don’t we come in and build people
permanent homes in a different way and
that the neat disruption about this
machine is rather than coming in and
buying bricks that are you know made in
China or made in some country where the
kids are making the bricks and the
bricks aren’t that good quality and of
course when you’re trying to rebuild you
have a huge amount of supply right or
sorry very little supply and a huge
amount of demand so whenever you have
that when you ever you have too many
people wanting a product usually the
products not well made right
so rather than facing all those
obstacles we said let’s be disruptors
and do it a different way we said let’s
bring this machine in let’s hire every
single person in the village that’s
effective right and get them running
that machine when they run the machine
they throw dirt in we put a little bit
of cement and every eight seconds you
saw that machine churn out these blocks
and now we’re building homes from these
blocks so it means the family actually
gets to help build their home right so
they’re actually buying into this
they’re they’re they’re putting their
sweat equity in and they know that
they’re building their own home with
what we’re doing
right you can train young people into
new jobs you teach them how to be Masons
you teach them how to make bricks and
blocks you teach them how to actually
build right it’s it’s incredible and the
greatest disruption is the money instead
of the money going from governments or
donors to us to a big company right the
money goes to people because I’m not
gonna just have people work for free
we’re gonna pay folks and if you’re in a
disaster zone and you don’t have a job
or you don’t have a livelihood that’s
the worst thing but if you have a job
right eight to nine people rely on you
which means everybody in this front row
if I hired you to do the work everybody
in that front row is now getting some
form of economic benefit whether that’s
the food that she provides or the
shelter that she provides and it’s a
better way of getting aid to people
through that livelihood
you know through that distribution of
cash for work right and then the output
product is a permanent home and if you
look at those homes they’re incredible
and we can build them cheaper than the
local you know then the local model is
right and then the best part is it’s all
made with local product right that’s
local dirt local cement the windows are
local the doors are local you know and
then when you realize that some of the
people that leave your program after
building these houses now have jobs and
construction companies you feel really
good about that but this is a great
disruptive model in moving money away
from the big corporation into the hands
of folks and delivering a great product
which is a permanent home let’s talk
about blast film if we were affected by
this blast and we had lots of windows
around us we’d be in a world of trouble
because the glass will come in and break
the shards will you know cut us to
pieces and you know there’ll be a heavy
death toll this is the daily life for
folks in Ukraine and when we put this
film on look at what happens the blasts
still occurs the window is gonna break
but it’s not gonna come flying in and
kill folks right so where do we do this
we’re actually putting this in the
schools and the hospitals in the nursing
homes along the line of contact in
Ukraine does anyone remember that
there’s a war going on in Ukraine and
the western part aside the eastern part
of that country Russia’s annexed a part
of an area Russia’s an excreme’ and you
get a bunch of informal soldiers right
usually drunk don’t really know what
they’re doing with equipment and 70 to
80 times a day they fire a mortar they
don’t even know where they’re firing
them and sometimes those mortars land in
a schoolyard sometimes they land in
front of a hospital and when they land
even if they don’t kill anyone who heard
anybody where they land
that concussive blast those waves that
come flying off they shatter windows and
they hurt and kill people can you
imagine if you’re a mom and you send
your kid to school you you want every
one of your mom’s when they send you
school they know you’re safe in school
school and safe they’re just words that
go together in Ukraine that’s not the
case and I could change that word
Ukraine and I can put in so many
different country names and still have
the same statement schools in Iraq
schools in Nigeria schools in South
Sudan right school you know there’s so
many countries that I can insert that
Yemen right where you have this instance
where the vulnerable are affected let’s
face it kids are vulnerable the elderly
are vulnerable people in hospitals are
vulnerable so we have a duty to protect
them so this technology this is not new
but the rich use it bankers our
embassies right they all use this
technology when we had the the g8 a few
years ago in Toronto and you remember
that every bank put this on their
windows all these commercial merchants
put this on their windows this type of
film so the technologies out there and
what we did was we said look we’re gonna
repurpose an innovative technological
idea and put it to the poor put it to
folks that are vulnerable put it to
folks that they can’t afford to have
this stuff on their own that didn’t even
know that it existed so do you see
innovation it’s not always about
creating a new idea sometimes it’s about
repurposing where you put the idea right
and this is what we do in Ukraine and
now mum knows that where kid goes to
school she’s safe let’s talk about some
of the tougher things
post-disaster like one of the things
that you absolutely need after a
disaster is access to clean water any
one of you in this room if you need a
drink of water what do you do you’re
going right to the fountain it’s it’s
within 25 steps for you right if you’re
coming into a disaster zone and you
don’t have clean drinking water this is
what’s gonna happen you’re gonna get
sick a waterborne disease will make you
ill now if you’re a young person
say you’re under the age of five or
you’re an older person let’s say over
the age of 70 you’re probably gonna be
immunocompromised right you’re probably
not going to be able to fight off
disease well which means the incidence
of death amongst young people or the
elderly in a disaster zone is really
high so that earthquake in Haiti
remember I said it killed a quarter
million people do you know how many more
people are gonna die immediately after
that earthquake because they don’t have
clean water it seems like ours don’t
come in and avert that secondary
calamity we make that initial death toll
look minut did you know there’s 1.2
million cases of cholera in haiti six
months after that earthquake 1.2 million
six times the number of people who died
in that quake and that is even with
everybody in the world coming in and
offering solutions and trying to get
folks clean water if you removed all the
responders of the world coming in and
you can get that clean water out how
much does that cholera outbreak grow
right and cholera it kills kids it’s
awful so this little thing that I showed
you is us coming up with innovative
technology pretty simple stuff but the
way we package it is different so
there’s a a UV light there’s a carbon
filter a sediment filter and it’s small
kits and with one of these small kits we
can show up and plug into the river and
then pull that crappy dirty contaminated
water out and people will line up and
come get clean water from us and that
difference that instant difference that
we could set up in an hour within an
hour of landing could very well save the
lives of everybody in that village
because they’re not gonna get sick
that’s how much of a difference that
makes Hurricane Matthew last year in
Haiti we landed on a Thursday night
Friday morning we were up into the zone
because we had to drive there and an
hour after we were in the city six of
these units are up and running and each
one of these units you know there’s ten
twenty thousand people a day can get
clean water that’s a lot of water
flowing but this is a good start right
this is what we call point of source
purification what’s better is when you
start pure
flying at point-of-use which means you
can give you can give mum the
opportunity to clean drinking water to
provide it at home so here’s our
volunteers in our warehouse and I fully
expect every one of you to sign up and
volunteer for us and come out and
assemble these kits so I’m being serious
with that so you can see these
volunteers they’re assembling bucket
systems right and then here’s one of our
people in Myanmar right teaching mum how
to assemble these units and this is the
coolest thing about innovation and
technology it does not need to be new
and cutting-edge this type of ceramic
filter has been around since the time of
the caveman this is all technology and
you can see it’s two buckets there’s a
ceramic candle filters between the
buckets and it’s gravity fed there’s no
electricity there’s no moving parts
there’s nothing to really break if one
of the candles breaks you put a plug in
the other three filters work and what it
means is the family gets clean water for
about a year okay these kits are 40
bucks 50 bucks let’s say by the time we
actually get them to everybody you know
between the air freight and the ground
truck and get them out maybe 60 dollars
well if the family is six people and I
told you that after any crisis or any
warzone I could get people clean water
for ten dollars for one year would you
not think that’s good value for money
well this is what we do and I remember
because lots of people come to us and
say Raul this is the greatest products
and sliced bread and we just challenge
it and say no it’s not it’s terrible
with this one when we first started
trialing them we did it in Haiti and
then we put two of the most austere
environments in the world Yemen and
Somalia these wars in Yemen and Somalia
have gone on forever they’re very hard
to reach people it’s a very difficult
situation and these worked there so
we’ve been using them for a few years
and what we do is we get volunteers to
come in and do the assembly and do the
drilling so we lower the cost of
transaction because when we can save
money on these units it means we can get
more units out to people and we’ve
gotten
seventy eighty thousand units out now in
the last few years to thirteen countries
Thursday we just had another five
hundred and twelve units fly in the air
to Istanbul this morning it landed on
the border and it’s being taken over in
a few hours to Syria to remember all
those folks that were affected by that
chemical weapons attack a couple weeks
back well we talked about that chemical
weapons attack and we talked about
America firing missiles we don’t talk
about the sixty-two thousand people that
fled those cities sixty-two thousand
people that fled with nothing that don’t
have clean water and now we’ve got about
five hundred of those families that
we’re gonna give this solution to you
still a lot more people in need but this
solution this type of solution is the
answer right so innovation doesn’t
always have to be new it doesn’t always
have to be purpose directed because
these ceramic filters have been used
everywhere else you can go to Canadian
Tire your parents might even buy these
ceramic filters for your cottage or your
house and it’s repurposed for this and
if you see that little guy there this
guy’s in Myanmar when it fluttered out
terribly a couple years ago and he now
has clean water and he’s not gonna die
as something as stupid as typhoid or
cholera it’s incredible and ten bucks a
year it’s an unbelievable thing I’m talk
to you about one other innovation a few
years ago remember I was telling you
about Haiti when we when we went into
Haiti we said look our convoys driving
and we’re trying to reach where we’re
going and we couldn’t get there cuz the
buildings were down and bodies were
everywhere and tires were burning and we
just thought if we had a little drone
above us that could guide us right we
would have gotten there faster and if we
got there faster we would’ve been set up
faster so those than hundreds of people
that we’re waiting for fractures to be
sent the turnitin amputations well maybe
we would have been able to set their
fractures so we started talking about
using drones back then in 2010 and the
technology has gotten better and better
and better so we launched a program
called rescue a V so rescue and then
unmanned aerial vehicle right and the
idea is can we do four things with
drones number one can we deliver aid to
people that are either cut off by war or
cut off by the mudslide or what have you
right number two can we take hundreds of
thousands of photos
and make those photos cross stitch them
into emergency maps and with those
emergency maps can we do comprehensive
damage assessments right number three
can we provide what’s called situational
awareness which means can I tell you
what bridge is out can I tell you what
Road is out there is nothing worse than
driving six hours with your convoy
trying to reach 20,000 people to get
them food or clean water or set up your
hospital and you come across a landslide
and you can’t get past it but if you had
a drone up you knew the landslide was
there and you wouldn’t have gone down
that road right and number four can I
support search-and-rescue functions
right so we launched this program and we
you know very very challenging program
very innovative very new and this little
tiny company I don’t know if you’ve ever
heard of them Google they decided that
we should win a google.org impact
Challenge award because we’re using
technology for good so with their money
we’ve now run drone programs in nine
countries back in the Caribbean last
year we had three multiple drone
programs going where we were mapping out
you know exactly where the problems were
we were doing the situational awareness
we were supporting the search-and-rescue
teams we’ve done it in Colombia we’ve
done in Ecuador it’s a very very
exciting program the methodology is
simple if I get you better information
as an emergency manager you’ll make
better decisions and the impact of your
decisions means that aid is delivered
more efficiently to more people doesn’t
that make sense
better information better decisions and
the output it’s not a test score right
the output is more aid to more people
which means saving more lives right like
it’s it’s one of the coolest programs
that we run so coming back to the
beginning I told you that you know
there’s 165 million people in need and
the money to take the caseload is so big
compared to the money available to help
these folks and programs like we just
launched here the four or five that I
just talked about they lower the cost of
transaction they make a delivery more
effective and they lower the cost of
actually helping people and it’s
innovation that’s all
so my challenge to you is this I want
you to volunteer for us I want you to
help us I want you to do simple things
like follow us on social media talk
about what we do talk about the problems
that we’re trying to fix and as you get
older and as you try to decide the
things that you want to do in life
whether you want to be the rock star or
the rocket scientist or the pharmacist
like whatever it is you want to do think
outside the box and think of some of the
ways in which the things that you’re
doing can be repurposed and changed for
us to help other people and if you
innovate
we’ll keep innovating and we’ll keep
delivering that aid thank you [Applause]
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