Team America Relief’s technology lead, Ian Porter, is receiving Slack’s Visionary Award for recognizing the opportunity to fundamentally transform the operation’s impact in Afghanistan by using Slack to help hundreds of Afghan refugees find safe passage out of harm’s way.
In August of 2021, as the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, the U.S. military airlifted thousands of its troops and citizens out of Kabul, along with Afghan allies eager to leave the country before an all-but-certain takeover by the Taliban. During those tumultuous days, and over the many months since, Afghan citizens took extraordinary risks to find safe passage out of the country.
As a U.S. military veteran himself who had served in Afghanistan alongside local interpreters who were now at risk, Porter felt compelled to act. So he joined Team America Relief (TAR), an ad hoc network of civilian and veteran volunteers with a shared mission: “To provide timely and relevant information and coordinate resources to responsibly evacuate or transition people at risk out of crisis.”
Porter used Slack in his day job as a product manager and knew the collaboration platform would be an effective digital HQ for the TAR team. As the organization’s volunteer workspace admin, he envisioned a digital response center that would bring teams, tools and partners together so they could swiftly triage cases and source solutions.
“This started with a bunch of military veterans, frontline civilians and their friends, basically people just doing what they could to make it easier for Afghans trying to escape.”
Porter’s vision quickly became a reality, and within 24 hours of its first formal meeting, TAR had established a modern emergency response center within Slack. TAR quickly scaled its operations, from initially supporting just 14 families to hundreds, and then thousands, of Afghans.
The organization now maintains a database of more than 70,000 individuals seeking relief assistance. TAR’s team has grown too, from 12 people collaborating via text messages and Excel spreadsheets to more than 200 volunteers working around the clock in Slack during peak activity in August.
Now the organization’s technology lead, Porter, with his vision and determination, helped TAR coordinate a global crisis response in Slack. To date, TAR has helped more than 1,000 people relocate from Afghanistan. And although its busiest days may be over, the team still actively monitors the situation and supports Afghans seeking to relocate, ever motivated by a steadfast desire to help.
