Disaster Relief

As a true community partner, we at Dell come together in times of crisis to help those in need. Working quickly to provide immediate aid is critical, and we continue to stay in contact with our employees, customers and emergency response organizations to help rebuild the communities where disasters have occurred.

Dell Team Members Respond to Crisis in Pakistan

Through our Dell™ corporate giving program, we will assist relief efforts with a donation of $150,000 to UNICEF. UNICEF has maintained a presence in Pakistan since 1948. Their response effort began immediately, delivering safe drinking water, critical medical supplies, supplementary food and family hygiene kits to more than a million people a day. In addition, UNICEF is supporting mobile medical teams, vaccination campaigns and sanitation efforts across the affected area.

Dell will also match team member contributions dollar for dollar, up to $150,000.

Dell Team Members Respond to Crisis in Chile

Dell Giving launched a relief effort program that gave Dell team members around the world an opportunity to make a financial contribution. Dell will provide $250,000 to match employee contributions dollar for dollar, up to $10,000.

Dell Team Responds to Crisis in Haiti

Here is what our Dell team members have done and are doing in support of the Haiti earthquake relief effort:

Corporate and Employee Donations — Dell made a cash contribution of $250,000 each to UNICEF and the International Red Cross within days of the earthquake, for a total of $500,000. Dell also agreed to match dollar-for-dollar gifts up to $250,000 made by our employees, which to date amounts to nearly $150,000 . We also have employees around the world volunteering in their local communities, with targeted relief efforts for Haiti and many of our Dell military reservists are being called to assist in the relief effort.

In addition, Dell Services (formerly Perot Systems) has donated more than $53,000 to support the relief efforts of NetHope, an interagency collaboration of 28 leading international humanitarian organizations. The funds donated will help restore communications to the 20 NetHope member-organizations working around Port-au-Prince and in other parts of Haiti. With restored connectivity, more than 3,500 humanitarian workers will be able to focus on delivering essential services to the Haitians impacted by the disaster. In addition, Dell donated 46 rugged notebooks for immediate use in Haiti.

The Haiti Relief and Rebuild Taskforce — The Haiti Relief and Rebuild Taskforce is a community coalition project that was initiated after US Vice President Joe Biden met with the Haitian-American community. The aims of this effort include inventorying available resources for the relief effort, creating a center for tracking and connecting Haitian Diaspora with surviving family members in Haiti, building an electronic clearing house to track reports of missing or trapped individuals in Haiti and marshaling the considerable human capital needed for the relief efforts.

Technology resources are crucial to support this monumental effort, and our Dell team members have responded in a big way. Within 48 hours of learning of this initiative, Dell responded by donating and delivering three servers, 45 notebooks, five desktops as well as several printers to help support this critical information hub. While the equipment was on the way, several regional service delivery management employees changed their schedules to travel to Miami to help coordinate the setup and support of these systems. Together, they pulled off what other volunteers referred to as a “miracle.” With the support and involvement of a broad Dell team, the technology to support this initiative was up and running before the taskforce even had enough tables to place the computers on. And then our facilities teams went to work to ensure that the center was fully equipped, sending more tables, chairs and office supplies from two sites in the United States.

Supporting Customers in Haiti — Finally, teams from around Dell are collaborating to ensure that we fulfill warranty dispatches to all of our customers in Haiti. Dell teams are also creating a Haiti Services Help Team to service local commercial accounts, consumers as well as international aid and Outside the Continental United States (OCONUS) support efforts that have, or plan to establish, operations in Haiti. These teams will provide support not only to Americas-based customers and organizations, but also to relief organizations based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) or Asia Pacific-Japan (APJ) who travel to Haiti in support of the rebuilding efforts. The teams are working around the clock to find solutions to challenges (including how to reach customers and get parts and products delivered) to do their part in support of rebuilding Haiti’s infrastructure (including banks, hospitals and government entities).

It was an ordinary Monday afternoon, and a new week had just begun in western China. At 2:28 in the afternoon of May 12, 2008 (6:28 a.m. GMT) an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 hit China. Over 1.3 billion people were impacted by this devastating earthquake. In the turn of a hand, the earth was moving, mountains were shaking, and buildings were falling. There was no time to run for help. People from all over the world mourned and turned their attention to the area of Sichuan. And Dell Services team quickly reacted to mitigate service delivery delays in the disaster areas.

Dell Global Command Center in Xiamen acted as an emergency command post by escalating and coordinating resources during the critical situation. At 3:01 p.m., the Command Center broadcast the initial communications to all Dell teams. All teams responded immediately and a corresponding message was sent at 3:10 p.m. to Dell global-related functional teams. At 4:30 p.m., the Command Center coordinated and led the first meeting with all  Dell Services teams, from technical support, services operations, logistics and every Dell service provider to discuss and deploy support resolution strategies. Updates from CCTV News streamed into the Center to capture new impacted areas. At 5:50 p.m., the initial action plan was issued and published.

For 2 weeks, the Command Center scheduled crisis management meetings with representatives from every service delivery team. The coordination and 24x7 efforts of all the teams were remarkable and unprecedented — from the technical support staff at the frontline to the on-site technician and parts delivery couriers.

The earthquake in China was the second natural disaster in Asia to occur in less than 2 weeks. Ten days before, on May 2, Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Myanmar. This storm caused massive destruction with fatalities estimated at 146,000 people and thousands missing. To aid victims of the earthquake and cyclone, Dell raised almost $1.5 million in donations for relief organizations in China and Myanmar.

Ways We Help

Dell disaster relief contributions can come in different forms:

• A corporate donation from Dell
• Donations made by employees
• Matching donations (of employee donations) made by Dell

Dell employees also volunteer time for organizations that provide disaster relief. In fiscal year 2009, Dell employees donated 145,000 hours of volunteer time, generating an estimated economic impact of $2.5 million.

Hurricane Katrina

Dell provided proactive customer support and helped lead disaster relief efforts when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and nearby states in September 2005. Our response to Hurricane Katrina was greatly enhanced by the efforts of our Enterprise Command Center teams. Before the severe hurricane hit, Dell took the necessary steps to prepare customers and position resources in advance, then monitored the situation and quickly responded to events to minimize any downtime.

Dell reached out to the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the mayors of New Orleans and Houston as well as the American Red Cross and Federal Emergency Management Agency for prioritization of their needs. Dell shipped more than 28,000 systems to the affected areas — including more than 1,500 loaned or donated systems — to aid in the recovery effort. These systems went to local, state and federal government agencies, nonprofit organizations and communications companies.