Dingdong Dantes’ Foundation Helps Launch LyfSaver App to Promote Community Support During Disasters

Dingdong Dantes, an award-winning actor and co-founder of the humanitarian organization YesPinoy Foundation, has announced the launch of a new app called LyfSaver, designed to foster community support and collaboration during disasters.

The announcement was made on the second day of Maki Fiesta, a media festival that celebrates free expression, democracy, and the creative economy. The event took place at the Ignacio B. Gimenez Theater at the University of the Philippines Diliman, where Dingdong delivered a talk titled, “The Power of Platform + Civil Action + Celebrity.”

Reflecting on the response to Typhoon Carina in July, Dingdong highlighted how Filipinos united to help by sharing hotlines on social media, distributing relief goods, and more. Inspired by this spirit of bayanihan, YesPinoy partnered with FYT, a community-focused Filipino independent media organization, and UP-NOAH, a disaster prevention and mitigation program, to develop LyfSaver.

LyfSaver is both a mobile app and a website accessible through browsers, encouraging users to provide updates during typhoons and other disasters. The app aims to build a community that can organize critical information for disaster management and climate action.

Users can report incidents such as floods, storm surges, landslides, barangay statuses, and accidents, as well as share photos, videos, and messages from the scene.

Dingdong explained that the app is built on three key pillars: hazard maps provided by UP-NOAH and the UP Resilience Institute, a crowdsourcing platform led by FYT, and a training program run by YesPinoy, which will operate on the ground.

The goal of LyfSaver is to create a broad community of “digital grassroots humanitarians,” leveraging the power of these pillars to save lives and foster community resilience.

Dingdong emphasized the app’s purpose of demonstrating “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, and the power of mentorship.”

He further stressed the importance of building a sense of national unity to achieve the shared goal of “zero casualties” during disasters, highlighting collaboration across government, public, and private sectors as essential.

“Every inch matters, whether it’s speaking out against abuse, asserting our rights, crunching big data to create more apps, coding a lifesaving app, or reaching out to our communities,” Dingdong said. “All of these efforts add up to form a strong and unified nation, working towards a national dream of safety and resilience.”