APs for Haiti (Aerohive repost)

APs for Haiti (Aerohive repost)

By CWNP On 05/03/2010 - 1 Comments

(reposted with permission from Aerohive) You bet we did! When my friend Mark Elliott of Mercy Ships (MercyShips.org) asked if we could “help a brother out”, we jumped at the chance.

We shipped a pile of APs and accessories out to Texas and Mark back-packed them into Haiti and gave them to Quisqueya Christian School.  He said it would be easier than an air-drop and safer than US Postal Service (or did I get that backwards?)…
Mark delivered them to a school-turned-relief-center where they were immediately deployed as a multi-building mesh.  With HiveManager Online for management, we can see, configure, and upgrade APs-de-Haiti as requested – way cool.

We could ramble on about all the ways the APs will get used, but it suffices to say that they are being used…to help people in need.  That’s all that really matters, right?  Aerohive encourages and challenges other vendors to do likewise.  It’s not a competition, but rather an opportunity for those who have to help those who don’t have. Sean Blesh, who runs IT operations for the Quisqueya Christian School in Haiti, is a seriously happy guy now.
http://quisqueya.org

We also want to take a moment to point out the real heroes in this situation.  People who go to other countries – be it Haiti, Africa, or any other broken or impoverished country – to help people survive are heroes in our book.  Mark, his wife Zana, and their two beautiful daughters rank at the top of that list, having entered the mission field 6 years ago.  I met Mark when, as the SE Director at Colubris, he attended a CWSP class I was teaching.  Shortly thereafter, Mark and Zana walked away from their $250k combined annual salary for an income of “whatever friends would choose to donate” in order to help people in Africa.  Since then, they’ve branched out to other continents with the same relief effort.  Heroes, they are.

How many times do you see something like that happen?  Mark started out running IT operations on a ship that was doing thousands of operations per year while docked along the coast of Monrovia.  Zana is a nurse practitioner and assisted with the surgeries while Mark deployed Wi-Fi pervasively across the ship using a kludge of donated parts.  Mark was the McGyver of Wi-Fi for about 18 months.  Aren’t you envious?  CWNP gave him a new laptop after he showed us his soldered-together-but-still-holding-on 2-yr old unit.  

If you’re wondering how you can donate tax-deductable contributions to help the Elliotts in their quest to help thousands of people in need, you can contribute here:

Mail to: Mercy Ships Donor Services Mark & Zana Elliott, Acct #1771 PO Box 2020 Garden Valley, TX 75771
Please do not put their names on any checks you might send (for tax purposes), and you can email Mark at elliottm@mercyships.org with questions.  You can keep up with the Elliott family’s adventures at coasty4christ on FaceBook.
Trust me when I say that I wouldn’t present you with a great opportunity like this unless I was also taking advantage of it myself.  My wife and I give several hundreds dollars per month to the Elliotts, and have been supporting them since the day Mark left Colubris.  Trust me, it’s the most worthwhile thing I do with my money.  The stories Mark and Zana can tell about their adventures will make you weep with joy and sadness;  my favorite being when they gave 1/2 of their annual income ($9600 at that time) to build a mud-brick orphanage and to dig a well for homeless girls in Liberia and Ghana.  I bet you can’t top that one. 

Haiti might end up being the most diverse Wi-Fi deployment in history, but if it works, who cares, right?  If everyone will just use the same SSID and PSK, then Haiti will have Fast/Secure roaming everywhere….kinda/sorta.

One last thing: don’t forget to send AP mounting hardware.

Tagged with: Aerohive, Mercy Ships, haiti, mark elliott

Blog Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within these blog posts are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of the Certitrek, CWNP or its affiliates.