LONDON (Trust.org) - Thomson Reuters Foundation won the award for "Best Use of New Media" for its Emergency Information Service (EIS) at the Third Annual Social Innovation Awards in London on Friday.
The awards by Justmeans, a global platform for corporate social responsibility, recognise companies that have implemented groundbreaking programmes to drive social or environmental change.
EIS is a free information service for survivors of natural disasters. It addresses life-threatening gaps in the chain of information when catastrophes strike by deploying highly mobile reporting teams to disaster zones to disseminate fast, reliable information to affected populations.
Launched for the first time immediately after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, EIS offered survivors free, practical messages straight to their mobile phones.
Despite countless logistical challenges, the EIS team deployed to Port-au-Prince within 48 hours. For the next two months, it delivered reliable, actionable information to tens of thousands of Haitians via SMS to help them minimise the impact of the disaster and access essential services such as medical care and shelter.
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