As hurricanes have pummeled the Gulf Coast over the past month, from Gustav to Ike, 2008 Echoing Green Fellow Ben Smilowitz has been doing the important, but occasionally unpopular, work of making sure federal relief agencies are doing their jobs effectively. Ben runs the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP), a new nonprofit organization that provides a platform for public pressure on FEMA and the Red Cross—a platform that simply did not exist prior to Hurricane Katrina. DAP’s hotline for gaps in disaster response had received only ten phone calls before Hurricane Ike hit Texas, but has received almost forty calls since then. DAP’s success is critical to developing sustainable and effective disaster response policy and practice in the United States.

Ben was recently profiled in the Hartford Courant. Taking action to help out is easy, and can make a big difference. You can volunteer to become a Disaster Accountability Monitor, share your disaster relief story, or get involved politically from DAP’s website. If you’d like to learn more about how you can get help, contact Ben personally.

Disaster Accountability Hotline: 866-9-TIP-DAP