Helping Palu Rise Again

We’ve been hard at work promoting resilience in the field and documenting stories of recovery in Sulawesi and Lombok. Since earthquakes and tsunamis uprooted those communities in 2018, we have seen neighbors come together to rebuild and strengthen their economies. Watch AtmaGo user Rahma as she talks about the ways in which she uses the app to help Palu rise again after disaster.

Community members are using AtmaGo for disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. AtmaGo has reached over 4 million people in 91 locations in Indonesia and is expanding to Puerto Rico this year. Over 2 million users have used AtmaGo to prepare, respond, and recover in the 34 locations hit by disaster in the last year.

AtmaGo: Saving Lives, Reducing Losses

Qualcomm® Wireless Reach™ and Atma Connect co-hosted an event in Jakarta on July 17, 2019 to launch the impact report from Center for Innovation in Policy Governance (CIPG) in Indonesia. The independent evaluation found that the use of AtmaGo can extend years of productive healthy life, reduce disability, and reduce economic losses due to disasters. At a reach of about 1M people, this translates to a savings of $106 million in avoided damages, and $4.7 million in avoided healthcare costs per year. The event brought together numerous government agencies, residents, organizations, and over 21 news organizations to recognize AtmaGo’s impact on disaster resilience in Indonesia.

Bambang Surya Putra, Director of Readiness at the Indonesian Disaster Management Agency said, “AtmaGo is such an important platform for us to share information on flooding, fires, and other disasters. It is an active local forum, and it is trusted, and helps us reach poorer neighborhoods throughout Indonesia.” Following the Launch event, Indonesia news media outlets, including the Jakarta Post, wrote articles discussing the potential benefits of mobile technology including AtmaGo. These Indonesian articles build on the great press that the impact report garnered in outlets such as Reuters, the World Economic Forum, and Forbes.

Atma Honored as Innovation in Disaster Resilience

The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) and USAID joined forces with KPMG and launched an Innovation Challenge designed to identify and nurture innovative organizations that are creating resilience-promoting solutions. Atma Connect won for our proposal: Catalyzing a Paradigm Shift: Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction at Scale. This proposal involves generating evidence to support the cost effectiveness of interventions that train community members to be “next responders” in a disaster. Winners were chosen for their ability to create long-term and inclusive change to promote disaster resilience — and Atma is excited by the opportunity to continue working with GRP.

As a winner, Atma will be presenting at the GRP’s upcoming Investor Forum, Investing in Resilience, in London, UK (more details below).

Visit Atma at SOCAP, NetHope Global Summit

Atma has a busy Fall planned so please visit us — and bring your colleagues!

SOCAP: San Francisco, October 22 to 25
SOCAP is in the vanguard of the emerging global impact economy —  convening ideas and capital to catalyze world change. Atma is pleased to be attending and speaking on the Million Lives Club panel at SOCAP, Tuesday October 22 at 1:30 pm, please come if you are free! Atma will be joined by representatives from other organizations working on innovations that are improving lives at scale.

NetHope Global Summit: San Juan, Puerto Rico, October 21 to 25
Atma is pleased to be presenting at the annual NetHope Global Summit, which will be held this year in the home of our newest expansion location in Puerto Rico. Atma’s Puerto Rico Partnerships Associate, Natasha Mevs-Korff, will be discussing our work on using mobile technology to build social cohesion and improve the resilience of communities to natural disasters. We are excited to share our future plans in Puerto Rico and learn from other organizations who are working to help the island rebuild better than before.

GRP Investing Resilience Forum: London, UK, November 5
Atma’s CEO, Meena Palaniappan, will be presenting AtmaGo at the Global Resilience Partnership’s forum to unlock capital to bring resilience innovations to scale. This event brings together social innovators who are developing solutions that improve resilience to climate change related threats — and investors who want to support these ventures.

We hope to see you there!

Sincerely,

The Atma Connect Team