Rapid Response

When disaster strikes, Brigade members spring into action.

About this Priority Action Area

Brigades across the country started responding to crises through rapid response initiatives for Hurricane Harvey, Maria, and more. This expertise paid off this year as the world faced our largest pandemic in a century, when Brigades were able to quickly pool their knowledge, resources, and know-how.

Read more about efforts Brigades have engaged in responding to COVID-19 on the Rapid Response Discourse post.

Projects

The Network has responded to the COVID-19 Pandemic in force, with Brigade members stepping up in our communities to offer their skills in response to the crisis we face. In particular, we’ve worked with local partners and created projects to help families find food during the pandemic, help nurses report needs in their hospitals, and track the status of healthcare providers during disaster.

Learn more about Rapid Response projects through their Brigade Project Canvases below.

Project Canvas
Migrant Service Map
Providing a guide for migrants (and service providers) to find services closest to themby Code for Boston
Project Canvas
Covid19 Response
Providing a guide for migrants (and service providers) to find services closest to themby Code for Boston
Project Canvas
Essential Artists Dayton
Creating a free marketplace to support local artistsby Code for Dayton
Project Canvas
Florida Eviction Protection
Helping Floridians understand their housing rights and connect them to resources for actionby Code for South Florida
Project Canvas
Healthcare Rollcall
Helping the City of Baltimore understand the impact of COVID on the city's elder-care facilitiesby Code for Baltimore
Local Transparency, Accountability, and the Fight for Racial Justice

Code for America stands against white supremacy, racism, and violence against Black people in all its forms. While we believe that the work towards racial justice and equality should be focused through organizations who have done this work for centuries, we also believe in people power and the collective impact Code for America Brigades can bring to their respective communities.

We’ve identified data-driven projects in the Network that can be used in support of racial justice locally that promote transparency, accountability, and accessibility in our civic systems. From city budgets to city council meetings and local ballot questions, these projects help empower changemakers and are hyper-local in their applications. Read more about the Code for America Network’s projects in Local Transparency, Accountability, and the Fight for Racial Justice.

Learn more about these data-driven projects through their Brigade Project Canvases below.

Project Canvas
Open Budget Oakland
Transforming Oakland budget data into an interactive display of charts and diagrams that is easy to read and use.by Open Oakland
Project Canvas
Maine Ballot
Provides concise, non-partisan information to make it easy to understand the ballot questions pending in Maine.by Open Maine
Project Canvas
Council Data Project
Making City Council data, meetings, and actions more accessible to Seattle residents.by Open Seattle

What is a Brigade Project Canvas?

One way the National Advisory Council and Network Team are focused on supporting the Priority Action Areas, is to ensure that successful projects in each Priority Action Area are lifted up and are easily accessible to other Brigades, should they wish to redeploy or share in similar projects. Teams for a number of successful projects in this Priority Action Area have created project canvasses to help other teams engage in similar projects.

Partnership

World Central Kitchen, FEMA, Mapbox and Code for America began working together in late March to mobilize Network volunteers to crowdsource official school data on the availability of free or reduced-priced meals to families around the country. The goal was to easily display pick-up/location information on a national map so that community members could quickly identify areas that need support, and provide a resource for the families of children to ensure they had access to this in real-time during the pandemic.

As a result, the Network volunteers were able to input several dozen official school district links. In turn the effort has helped families with food security across the country, during the COVID-19 national shutdown.

Mapbox Dashboard
Medium Blog: Mapping distributed, crowd-sourced data from a spreadsheet

Do you want to get involved in a project in this Priority Action Area?
Join our Slack community to pitch in.