Although we launched this integration a couple weeks ago, I realize I’ve been remiss to post about it here! This is definitely one of the more inspiring projects I’ve worked on lately, and I’m eager to create such partnerships with other international mobile carriers to provide disaster management support via Twitter in the future.

When the cholera outbreak hit, we were eager to help in some small way.  Specifically, we wanted to bring together Twitter’s power in disaster response more proactively with the current cholera outbreak, and were lucky to find the right partners to do so. First, we worked with the Red Cross to create a new Twitter account, @kwawouj, specifically devoted to this outbreak to send updates in Haitian Creole that direct locals to the resources they need on the ground.

Voila, one of Haiti’s leading wireless communication providers, then agreed to sen a mass update to all their subscribers urging them to follow @kwawouj’s cholera updates via SMS through Twitter’s fast follow function.

Finally, Healthmap is then working to plot important reports (from Twitter, SMS, RSS, etc) onto their crisis-map. Crisis-mapping is an incredible tool that can connect needs with the resources, and Twitter is one of the ways that information can be culled (for a better understanding of crisis-mapping, see this interview with Jon Gossier of Ushahidi:

See my post over at Twitter’s main blog and then the second part of the post over at Twitter’s Hope140 blog to get a full understanding of the full integration on this project to provide some support in the face of a devastating cholera outbreak.

(P.S. Right now — we’re looking for a mobile carrier in Indonesia and in Pakistan interested in providing pro-bono support in the same way Voila did with us in Haiti. See more about the innovative ways that Twitter is being used in disaster relief in Indonesia here.)