Assigned Post #1 Humanitarianism

Today's class began with the very interesting topic of humanitarianism and how it affects the ever changing world around us and the people we care about. It is defined as an ethic of kindness, benevolence, and sympathy extended universally impartially to all human beings. Before this class tonight, I had a general idea of when humanitarianism was, but after class I left with a much better understanding of the term. The fact that I was unaware of before this class was that in addition to giving aid to those in need after natural disasters, many non-profit organizations such as the Red Cross also started out by neutral in times of war by helping both sides with medical supplies, food and water, and also by helping to free prisoners of war on both sides. I found this to be very interesting that the Red Cross helps people all over the world both in times of peace and war.

The first thing that we learned in class today was that all natural disasters are due to humans not nature. It was defined as a consequence when a natural calamity affects humans and the built environment. This means that when natural disasters occur anywhere in the world, the resulting losses depend on the human ability to resist the disaster and their resilience. An example of this would include Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and how unprepared they were for this event, which led to a high death toll and high damages to infer structure. We also learned the very important lesson that if humans can act before the strike of hazards properly in order to prevent the hazard from becoming a disaster. 


I found that the most influential and interesting fact that I heard in class tonight was about the situation that happened in Japan. I thought it was insane that they were so well prepared for any earthquakes due to their resilient building structure, however many of the living areas were below sea level causing them to be ill prepared for high winds and flooding of a tsunami. As one of the classmates said tonight, Japan was destroyed by this series of events considering the fact that the initial earthquake took out all the power and following that the tsunami destroyed the back-up generators.    


After class I found an interesting video that has to do with Osama Bin Laden and Humanitarianism. The title of the video is Al-Qaeda's Suspect Humanitarianism and the link is as follows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjZL80ic2Es

This video talks about how Bin Laden released a tape sometime after 2001 when Americans believed that he was dead in order to create a new relief body in order to help with the summer floods in Pakistan. Shortly into the video speaks of his real motifs which were to make the government look like they are being uncaring in order to bring more followers to his terrorist cause.  I felt that this was an interesting video considering the content we are going over in class. 

The conclusion I came to at the end of class tonight was that humanitarian aid can prolong and fuel conflicts, thus undermining its ultimate goal of saving lives. It is everyone's sole choice to determine whether humanitarianism is helping or hurting everyone and if this practice should continue or not. Let me know what you guys think and comment on my blog post? 

About Me first SRA 397A Post

Hello my name is Jesse DelRosso and I am currently a senior at Penn State. I am currently taking the SRA 397A class because it sounded very interesting when I was looking for one my class to add and I also felt it would look good on a resume for post graduation purposes. I grew up in Pittsburgh and I am a huge Penguin and Steeler fan. I played hockey in high school and also here at Penn State. In my free time I enjoy hanging out with friends, watching movies, playing sports, and playing Xbox. When I gradate from Penn State I hope to get a job somewhere in the Intelligence field either for the government or for an exclusive company. I hope to be very successful some day and hopefully this class will be one of the building blocks to lead my way.

My first impression of this class was a very good one. I really liked the way the room was set up and built for comfort. The laptops were actually good for once and not 10 years old. I thought the main use of the room to have class with people from the other side of the world was pretty awesome as well. As for the class in general, I think that the topics were are going to cover on the syllabus this year look very interesting. After just the first discussion in the classroom Monday night, I actually want to read for once because we get to engage in the conversation in the next class about the readings instead of just memorizing what we read, taking a test on it the next day, and forgetting all that information the very next day. I feel that this type of learning will be very beneficial to the students and will give us a deeper understanding of the material.

After this class has come to an end I believe that most if not all of us will have a better understanding of crisis informatics and some of us may even be inspired to help some of these people out that are in need with the skills that we have acquired through school and outside of school as well. Classes like these set up students for the real world and to focus on events that are happening now instead of reading about something that happened 100 years ago in a book that no one really cares about. I am excited to learn about new things that are happening in the world around us every day that has to do with some part of the SRA major. For example, yesterday we felt the effects of an earthquake that hit 5.8 in Virginia. New disasters happen everyday and I am looking forward to learning new strategies and methods of help in this class to assist people that are in need. Maybe one day I can be one of the people helping others with my new found skills.

P.S. I hope we talk about the earthquake in Virginia next class session.

-Jesse DelRosso