Immediately after a disaster such as the earthquake that struck Haiti, it is natural to think of the necessities: food, water, sanitation, housing. But Inveneo's experience demonstrates how a new factor has entered the equation: access to the Internet and other communications technologies. These services are now a critical component of disaster recovery—just as they will be a critical part of Haiti's longterm rebuilding process. In our work with Haiti over the last seven months, we have seen firsthand how Inveneo's services can save lives. After the earthquake, international technology nonprofits, U.S. government officials, Haitian telecommunications companies, and Silicon Valley start-ups banded together to deploy an SMS-based emergency reporting channel for the affected population. The timeline of the collaboration was intense; the first four days of the group Skype chat fills a 300-page document. On the day of the earthquake, crisis mapping organization Ushahidi launched a platform that allowed reports to be processed through email, web form, Twitter, or major news outlets. In a country where 30 times more people have access to mobile phones than to land lines or the Internet, the largest available channels for communicating needs were mobile phones and SMS. Within 24 hours of the quake, FrontlineSMS:Medic, Ushahidi, the U.S. State Department, and Digicel, Haiti’s largest telecommunications company, were working to establish a system to organize a flood of text messages from the ground. On January 16th, working with the Thomson Reuters Foundation and InSTEDD, the Project 4636 system was launched and word of the free service was spread to community radio stations throughout Haiti: “Report emergencies and missing persons by texting to 4636.” Later outreach asked those texting to include their need and location. Once an SMS was received by the mobile operator, it was transferred to a website where roughly 1,000 members of the Haitian diaspora translated, mapped, and categorized every message. These structured reports were