Gap Year Connections

As some of you may know, on Wednesday a series of earthquakes and a Tsunami caused devastation around the Pacific rim, mainly in Samoa, American Samoa and Sumatra.
For most of the day New Zealand remained on Tsunami alert. Thankfully the waves which did eventually break on our shores were nowhere near as high as expected and minimal damage was incurred.

For the Lattitude team here in the office the morning was a hectic one. With 50+ volunteers in country we had a lot of people to try and contact very quickly. To add to this, almost all of our volunteers were on holiday from their school placements, so theoretically could have been anywhere in NZ or the Pacific.

It was a day which really proved how strong the network of connections made through Lattitude can be. Thanks to some quick fire texting, and volunteers passing on messages, within half an hour we had heard from most of our volunteers ensuring that they were safe and well.

Below is the link to a news article on the subject which features some of our volunteers:

http://www.hawkesbaytoday.co.nz/local/news/text-warns-unsuspecting-trio/3904838/