Case Study: 510 Global (a Netherlands Red Cross initiative) enables emergency food access for 20,000 households with Twilio

How the Netherlands Red Cross uses Twilio to support COVID-impacted communities in the Caribbean

510 Global, an initiative of the Netherlands Red Cross, faced a sudden crisis when COVID‑19 collapsed tourism across Aruba, Curaçao and Saint Maarten, leaving many households without income and in need of food support. The local Red Cross branches needed a fast, scalable way to share up‑to‑date information about food vouchers and assistance in residents’ native languages to reach thousands across the islands.

Working with Twilio, the team built a crisis communications system in two days, starting with Programmable Messaging and quickly switching to the Twilio WhatsApp Business API when SMS proved less effective. Using multi‑channel messaging in four languages, they sent more than 124,000 messages and helped roughly 20,000 households access emergency food support.

510 Global

Maarten Van Der Veen

Founder and Strategic Lead