Caring for the Team

This unit will discuss the various risks to physical and mental well-being while participating in an HOT Activation and how best to mitigate or minimize the impacts of those risks.

Items to Read

Ushahidi Blog Post - To begin to understand the real risk to digital volunteers, read this guest article posted to Ushahidi by HOT's own Heather Leson.

Physical Health Risks

To begin to understand the real risk to digital volunteers, read this guest article posted to Ushahidi by HOT's own Heather Leson.

Knowing the Risks

As a digital volunteer, or basically anytime you're using a computer, you are doing things that aren't 'natural' for the human body; such as sitting for long periods of time looking at artificial light. Many of the same risks found in the modern office setting are applicable to digital volunteers even in the comfort of their own home. The Center for Disease Control has some resources explaining those risks: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/officeenvironment/

Mitigate the Risks

Now that you know the risks, what can we do to mitigate them? It is expected that the Community Care Activators regularly check-in with the Activation Team with gentle reminders to take care of themselves. This email from Heather Leson sent during the Nepal Earthquake Activation is a great example. Some basic tactics for mitigating health risks are:

• Taking frequent breaks (get up and stretch at least every hour)
• Limiting yourself to 12 hour shifts, no more than 16 hours a day
• Set aside at least 6 hours a day for sleep, preferably 8-10
• Take a minimum of 2 days off every two weeks
• Eat healthy and drink water

Review

Irreparable damage to the physical health of digital volunteers can occur.

• True
• False

Mental Health Risk

This lesson will focus on the mental health of digital volunteers and tactics to mitigate those risks.

Recognizing the Symptoms

Recognizing and dealing with the psychological impact of a response on digital volunteers is truly difficult. Here is another article by Rakesh Bharania regarding what the article calls Disaster Stress. In general Community Care Activators should be on the look out for changes in behavior, however communication is often only through email on the main HOT list; here are some tactics to recognizing a potential stress related behavior changes:

• Someone who is usually very active and passionate on the mailing list has suddenly quieted down.
• The opposite - someone usually quiet is suddenly very active and overly passionate on email.
• Using language that is very negative, disparaging, guilt-ridden or angry.
• Especially any language that is personally attacking or offense to others or suggests they may harm themselves.
• Messages that are confusing or show the person may have a distorted sense of time or difficulty focusing.
• Messages that suggest excessive use of caffeine, alcohol or other substances.
• Communication discussing an increased or decreased spiritual or religious understanding.

*Note: none of these symptoms are assured signs of a problem, only warnings that should be investigated.

Minimizing the Risks

Psychological First Aid was developed for reducing the occurrence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in military veterans, but has since been adopted for other uses and provides a great baseline resource for how Community Care Activators can help those involved reduce or eliminate the risk of any lasting affects associated with digital volunteering. Things to do and encourage others to do:

• First and foremost: stay calm and be nice
• Provide a safe environment: instead of replying to the main list, reply in private and offer to talk however they would like
• Ensure basic needs are met: if they have not sleep, ate, taken a break, etc.; ask them to attend to those needs first
• Listening and connecting: actively listen and try to connect people with others who they can discuss and keep tabs on
• Giving information and space: make sure messaging is getting out and if someone doesn't reply right-away, give space

Review

Choose the appropriate response to this example email: "If the people contributing to this Activation do not stop deleting my work, I am going to come find you."

• Email the Activation Lead with the HOT Executive Director copied notifying them of the email.
• Reply directly to the sender asking them not to use threatening language on the mailing list.
• Reply-all asking the moderator to ban the sender.

People reading this material for credit on the HOT Courses website should share their answer in the #courses slack channel on HOT's Slack ( Request Invite ) If anyone has any question about the correct answer to a Review question, please ask in the #courses channel of HOT's Slack.

When to seek assistance:

Anytime you think there is an immediate danger to the person in question or that they may harm others, or if all attempts to connect and calm the person, you should immediately inform the Activation Lead and Executive Director.