Facebook will now let you donate resources to a disaster area via the new Community Help feature

Facebook Safety Check is a feature that lets users in a disaster-affected area “check-in” to let their friends know that they’re safe. A planned upgrade to Safety Check, called Community Help, is now live.

Community Help was announced last year and was intended to expand on the scope of Safety Check. While Safety Check would only let you let others know that you’re safe, Community Help will let you donate resources via Facebook.

Users can offer resources on Facebook. These can include spare rooms, clothes, covers, food, etc. Once claimed, these offers will be removed.

Facebook believes that the last minute scramble for resources and setting up spreadsheets and documents, etc. by rescuers at a time of a disaster is very “chaotic”, reports recode.

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Facebook hopes that Community Help will help in this regard. The feature will only be enabled on accounts that are at least a few days old and even then, only if the user is over 18.

With 1.8 billion people on Facebook, it’s reach spans the globe. Social media has always come in handy in disaster situations, but with dedicated tools like these, its influence will only increase, and for the better at that.