Dingdong Dantes' foundation helps launch LyfSaver, an app to foster bayanihan during disasters

Dingdong Dantes, award-winning actor and co-founder of humanitarian organization YesPinoy Foundation, is launching a new app titled LyfSaver.

He announced this on the second day of Maki Fiesta — a media festival celebrating free expression, democracy, and the creative economy — on Saturday morning at the Ignacio B. Gimenez Theater in University of the Philippines Diliman. Dingdong was the plenary speaker and opened the second day with a talk titled, “The Power of Platform + Civil Action + Celebrity.”

The actor looked back on Typhoon Carina in July, and how Filipinos came together to help out in any way they could, like posting hotlines on social media, distributing relief goods, and many more.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/lifestyle/content/914810/marian-rivera-dingdong-dantes-donate-over-700-relief-packs-for-typhoon-carina-victims/story/

With this, YesPinoy collaborated with FYT, a Filipino community-oriented independent media outfit, as well as the University of the Philippines Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards (UP-NOAH), an integrated disaster prevention and mitigation program to launch LyfSaver.

Both a mobile app and website that can be accessed on browsers, LyfSaver encourages users to give updates during typhoons and other disasters, “and build a community that can help organize critical information for disaster management and climate action,” Dingdong said.

LyfSaver allows users to report incidents such as floods, storm surges, landslides, barangay statuses, and accidents, and also post photos, videos, and messages of the scene.

He said that the app has three pillars: hazard maps by the UP-NOAH and the UP Resilience Institute; a crowdsourcing platform led by FYT; and a training program led by YesPinoy, who will be on the ground.

The Kapuso Primetime King emphasized that the app’s goal is to build a community “as large as possible of digital grassroots humanitarians through the power of each of these pillars.”

He added that the app aims to show “the power of information and the ability to process this information towards life saving ends, the power of connectivity, the power of storytelling, the power of volunteerism na hinding hindi mawawala, the power of mentorship.”

“I think the goal is to really make our nation feel like a true community and harness that sense of community towards the greater good,” Dingdong said.

“Ang layunin po natin ay zero casualties, and that’s the goal of everybody. Lahat ng nasa gobyerno, ang ating public sector, pati ang private sector,” he added, adding that this collaboration between everybody is important.

Dingdong said that this initiative aims to show how every move matters when it comes to helping one another.

“Every inch matters, whether it’s in speaking out against abuse or speaking out against lies, by asserting our rights, or crunching big data to visualize more apps, or coding a lifesaving app, or telling the stories of those who cannot yet find a voice, or reaching out to our communities so that the scrambling and panic is minimized when the storms do come,” Dingdong said.

“All of these efforts add up towards one strong and final equation wherein we come together as one nation, as one community working towards a national dream of safety and resilience,” he added. —JCB, GMA Integrated News