Hi. My name is Vinay Gupta, of the Hexayurt project, a FOSS-style organization aimed at radically improving the lot of refugees and the poor.<p>We've had some luck, recently, and we need help coping.<p>Here's the technology - we call it "Disastr" - a simple approach to using the network to reinforce efforts to evacuate and rehouse American refugees in the event of a natural disaster like the potential Bay Quake, or events of a more man-made nature.<p><a href="http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_Mass_Evacuation" rel="nofollow">http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_Mass_Evacuation</a><p>We just won the Treehugger Participate! context, to go and showcase the shelter technology (the hexayurt itself) at Burning Man.<p><a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/participate_win.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/participate_win.php</a><p>We also have an event in Washington DC, involving the DoD, the American Red Cross, and a variety of other groups, where we are hoping to present some of our work (the "Expedient Infrastructure for Transitory Populations" project.)<p>Here's the issue: we're unfunded. It's been paid for mainly out of our own pockets, although we've had a little funding from the DoD for some parts of it. Now we have the classical problem of success: taking it the next step of the way takes funding, and funding we do not have. We're flying all over the country to show this stuff to people.<p>The existing funding cycles are vastly too slow and unresponsive to help us. We travel light and move fast.<p>So here's the question: can the "micro-cap" model, like Y-Combinator, work for venture philanthropy too?<p>Who's willing to throw, say, $10,000 at this project, to see what we can do? Everything you see so far was done on less than $5k.<p>Vinay Gupta, hexayurt@gmail.com