CADUS: redefine global solidarity

Thanks a lot for the invitation.

It's definitely not my time of the day so
excuse me if I'm a little bit…

Right, next the track.

I'm always really happy to speak
in front of people

who are dealing with IT and stuff
because I'm so much not an IT person.

You saw that I wasn't even able to start
my presentation alone.

I'm from CADUS.

CADUS is a humanitarian NGO that was
founded 3 years ago in Berlin.

It was founded out of a kind of subculture
that is strongly related to the CCC, but

to the musical and festival subculture
as well.

What I want to talk about today is
our crisis response makerspace in Berlin.

Holger (Levsen) invited me after we saw
each other again at Datengarten in Berlin

and he asked if I can make the presentation
in english as well.

My english is shit, so please excuse me if
I have to search some words

from time to time.

Do you have an idea
what this is?

It's a huge truck, it's a medical sign
on it, so this is a kind of mobile hospital.

Mobile hospital which you can use if
other hospitals are broken down

or if there are no hospitals.

Do you have an idea how much
such an hospital would cost you

to buy?

3 millions, 2 millions, 3 millions,
4 millions, hum…

This is a picture of a destroyed hospital
in Syria.

You all see a lot of pictures on the TV,
stuff like that.

Can you relate these 3 to 4 millions
mobile hospitals

to these destroyed hospitals.

Do you normally see in the media that
if a hospital is destroyed

then this fancy stuff is deployed
to there?

Do you have an idea why?

It's "fucking expensive"?

Something more?

"Who's gonna pay for it?"

"Is help wanted?"

More?

It is a question of safety from time
to time.

But on top you have to imagine Syria,
war country, dust, heat,

no supply chain, nothing like that, so
bringing there

a 4 million mobile hospital might end in
two weeks of working and after that

nothing is working anymore because
you don't have the technicians

who can repair this kind of stuff
for example.

Next example, I'm sure you know.

What it is is a pretty fancy fire truck.

You have them in Germany
in all the bigger villages and

all the cities, stuff like that.

If you take a look inside this firetruck,

you see plenty of fancy stuff.

I love this stuff, there is stuff to put
out fire, there's stuff to lift things

with hydrolics.

There is normal stuff like shovels and
stuff like that.

But if you relate this to pictures
in disaster areas,

this is from Haiti, then you see that
you have plenty of people

but no equipment at all.

All's pretty clear because normally,
after a disaster,

people from all over the world come
as fast as possible to the disaster area

the so-called "urban search and rescue
teams".

They're coming by plane, so
all the fancy stuff that we have

in our societies stays here,

and a few people that typically
???

go to the disaster areas to help
the poor people.

You understand this was cynical.

And there's a third example.
Have you ever seen what this is?

This is a tourniquet.

A tourniquet is one meter of nylon strap
and a little bit of plastic.

A tourniquet is the best way to stop
severe bleeding immediately.

We know this since the second world war.

At least it's twenty years
it's totally clear and

it's validated, this is the best way to
stop severe bleeding.

Spoiler, you won't see this in the media
if you see like people in Syria getting hurt

like losing legs after explosions and
stuff like that.

Do you have an idea how expensive is
such a thing?

One meter of nylon, a little piece
of plastic?

Not so expensive, but it goes in
that direction:

55 dollars for one of these.

55 dollars for fucking one meter
of nylon strap.

And, I don't know, less than 10g
of plastic.

The last example, I don't know if you have
a pet.

I had a dog, if I would like to,
I could add a GPS to my dog

and this GPS would say when my dog
is sleeping, where my dog is,

where I can find my dog if it's gone,
stuff like that.

But again if you went Haiti directly after
the earthquake,

people search for other people in
collapsed building

with their bare hands.

So, obviously, we have a lot of
technical solutions for everything.

I can look for my fucking dog in Hamburg
where it is via my app on my iPhone

but on the other hand, in a disaster area
it's not even possible to search for

people who are buried in collapsed buildings.

There are several reasons for that.

One reason: humanitarian work,
humanitarian aid is a market.

This is a little bit perverted but
it is a market.

It's always a question.

It's not like "Who wants to aid?" but
"Who pays for the help?".

"Who gets his share out of the ??? ?"

And you can imagine we have, I don't know,
every two or three years a major earthquake

so the market, if you compare it to
another business market, is pretty small.

Who cares for the 1000, 2000, 3000 people
who die in the earthquake every 3 years?

The next thing: access to the market.

Is it possible to bring things to Syria?

Why should I develop, as a businessman
in capitalism,

why should I develop something if I can't
reach my market easily?

And the third thing: who are the players
on the market.

In humanitarian aid, most players are NGOs.

NGOs are not really interested in
developing new things because

if I have an NGO, a classical NGO, then
I like the things how they are.

If there is a disaster, I send my people,
I make some nice pictures for the media

and I get a little of donations.

I'm not interested in changing things.

If I would like building capacity and
local communities

so much that they don't need me anymore
after disasters,

then there's no need for my nice wide
NGO anymore.

So, these three things together make
the situation where you have

a lot of solutions in our communities
and in our societies

but you have no possibility to bring this
to disaster aid.

We started in 2014 in northern Syria
more or less by accident.

We were asked if we could come
with a political delegation and make

an overview of the medical infrastructure.

And ever since we were stuck
in this region

because we saw no NGOs working there,

because the states were not really willing
to pay money for that,

because the northern, north-east Syria
is ruled by some Kurdish militias

and these Kurdish militias are too lefty
to get money from states,

let's say it this way.

So we saw the situation there and
we still had 4-wheel driven truck

here in Germany and we said

"This would be great if we just built
out of this truck a mobile hospital."

We had no idea how to do this,

we were really a little bit naive
in these times.

We said just like

"It's a nice truck, there's a lot of space
in that truck, so let's build it."

"We have an idea, we have a fantasy.
We will go with this truck to northern Syria

then we will give it to a local NGO and
then they have a mobile hospital

to follow the front lines in their fight
against the so-called islamic state."

And one year and a half, two years later,
we really were in nothern Iraq,

not northern Syria so far, but in
northern Iraq with our mobile hospital.

And it was pretty hard to cross a border
to Syria so we had to stay in northern Iraq

So we asked to WHO, the World Health
Organisation,

"What can we do right now? We are here,
we have a mobile hospital.

Do you see any need for us?"

And they said

"Yeah, guys, if you'd like to, then
we would like to send you to Mossoul."

I don't know if you saw in the media,
last year,

the battle of Mossoul was one of the most
bloody and the most shitty battle

that we had in the past 20, 30 years,
I think.

It was a lot civilian casualties and
we said

"Ok, let's try. We built this mobile
hospital, let's see if it's working."

We were able to work, like, 1.5km
behind the frontline with the islamic state

and we were really wondering, we were
really surprised, because we saw that

nobody else was working there, because
they just didn't have the equipment for that