Hands On Disaster Response

Hands On Disaster Response is a US-based, volunteer-driven, non-profit organisation. They strive to provide hands-on relief to survivors of natural disasters with maximum speed and minimum bureaucracy. Their projects focus on applying volunteer resources and expertise to disaster-affected communities around the world.

As a result of the devastating effects of the tsunami in December, 2004, businessman David Campbell headed to Thailand to see how he could help. His intended one week volunteer visit turned into a one month stay, during which he became one of the founders of HandsOnThailand, which, over a 3 month duration, brought more than 200 volunteers and several hundred thousand dollars to assist the rebuilding of five Phuket fishing villages.

After hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the US in 2005, David joined with several other HandsOn volunteers to establish HandsOnUSA. One week after Katrina, the team had an operations center in Biloxi, MS, 50 volunteers committed and en route, and dozens of community re-development projects launched. In total, more than 1,500 volunteers helped HandsOnUSA serve the survivors of Katrina during the 5-month deployment.

In 2006, this volunteer response model became known as Hands On Disaster Response (HODR), and has since then engaged with large national and international natural disaster events for a total of nine deployments.

UPDATE

To eliminate confusion with other organisations whose names were too similar to Hands On Disaster Response, in September of 2010 HODR adopted the name All Hands Volunteers. The name All Hands Volunteers is also recognition that they will use their powerful “empowered volunteer” model beyond the initial response phase of a disaster, and also that they may have opportunities to launch projects in areas with great need without the triggering event of a major disaster.