Closing the loop- Responding to people's information needs from crisis response to recovery to development: A case study of post-earthquake Haiti

This paper, a review of an Internews humanitarian-information radio program launched in Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake that devastated the country, argues that information provision should be a core component of any humanitarian assistance or development program. Radio is a cost-effective, ubiquitous, widely used and credible news source in Haiti. The Internews program, Enfomasyon Nou Dwe Konnen (News You Can Use, or ENDK), reported directly on concerns that members of the affected population identified as most important to them in the year after the earthquake, a year that included a destructive hurricane, a cholera epidemic and election violence. We therefore argue that ENDK has “closed the loop” on assistance provision by connecting it directly to the information needs of the affected population.