BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information

Subject: BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 02:04 PM

The other thread is getting too bogged down with personality conflicts, and I think this information is getting lost.

I keep a lot of these sites bookmarked, and I do research on organizations usually a couple of times a year. So, I hope this helps people help others, by making the most of their donations.

Here is the excellent Reuters AlertNet website, where you can find a ton of information on international relief, from satellite maps of disaster areas, to information on what NGOs are doing what, where, and for whom. At great place to start.

Charity Navigator is the largest US charity watchdog, and has current information on the Asian tsunami relief efforts. This is another place you can go to do your charitable donation homework.

There is also Network for Good, though I have to say, they never impressed me much.

Better for me has been Ministy Watch, to help sort the good, bad, and the ugly of donating to religious organizations. For instance, it is good to know that Catholic Relief Services, a notorious "pro-life" outfit, won't donate to or help clinics where certain reproductive services (abortion usually, though not exclusively) are perfomed. Now, if you are interested in helping women especially in disaster areas, that fact translates to your Catholic Relief Services donation never getting to the best clinics in the area. That is just one example of the values politics gone awry, and underscores the importance of doing your homework about the organizations you donate to.

There is also the Charity Watch page for the American Institute for Philanthropy, which I linked to recently in another thread about the Salvation Army. Another great resource for evaluating charities.

So, decide how you want your donation money to be used first, then go looking for a good match.

Below is some cut and paste info about the realities of relief services from an article written by a relief worker a few years back. I've only given portions of the article here, to help people get an overview of the "on the ground" realities of the relief industry, to help them make informed decisions.

Emergency funds are often given during moments of great human suffering and public sentiment. But ironically despite the initial emotional impulses this aid is rarely given entirely altruistically or without due consideration for economic interests. In today's world, if the countries involved had not been subscribing to the dictums of the donor governments' own economic interests (trade agreements, export driven economies and IMF led economic restructuring programs, war on drugs, etc.) it is not all together obvious that such an outpouring of aid would be forthcoming.

In places where there is no real economic basis for a lot of monetary aid, the donor governments and agencies will occasionally be compelled to respond on the basis of public sentiment fuelled by images coming over CNN or some other news show. This is definitely an accurate assessment of what is happening right now with the Asian tsunami crisis, as we have seen with the paltry amounts of aid money promised by the EU and the US (that 'stingy' story). A typical donor response will be to try to minimize the aid offered by either making preconditions for the aid's receipt or by offering commodities which are in overabundance in the donor's own country (and often heavily subsidized commodities).

This latter phenomenon is referred to as "dumping". Food dumping and drug dumping are the most common forms. Rather than give the starving people of Sudan or Somalia food which they are familiar with, food which could be brought locally/regionally (and, thus spur the regional economy), or food which might be tasty, donor governments instead will ship tons upon tons of western maize, wheat flour, beans, whatever they have on hand (and, thus, depress the regional economy). And commonly, the food is totally inappropriate for the situation. For the donor, however, food dumping offers a rather painless way to be rid of overstock and at the same time proclaim some good deeds.

Drug dumping has become a huge international tragedy on its own right. During the Bosnian conflict there were literally warehouses filled with expired or useless pharmaceuticals. Drug companies have used humanitarian disasters to donate their slow selling products, their damaged batches, their expiring or discontinuing drug lines so that they can claim the tax write off and at the same time show a compassionate face to their customers. The consequence is that sick people end up with useless or toxic medicines. They are often packaged in unfamiliar languages, often in preparations unknown to the local inhabitants, often for ailments which aren't appropriate to the situation.

The donors themselves never actually carry out the work that they pay for with their aid agency funds. This is left to the recipient agencies: the nongovermental organization community. The alphabet soup that the world's international non-governmental organizations (INGO) make up is even more convoluted than that of the donors. MSF, ACF, OXFAM, SCF, CARE, ADRA, CRS, etc. are but a few of the larger ones. Literally thousands of small and medium sized INGO's , local as well as international, receive money from the donor governments.

One way around the inefficiencies and politics of the big international relief INGOs is to give greater support to locally based NGOs that keep donated money and other items closer to the recipient's home community. Even overhead costs of these local NGO's (such as salaries for their staff) translates into local jobs and payments directly into the local economies. These local NGO's can be quite sophisticated even if they are small and under funded. Often, by virtue of their greater abilities to engage the local populations, they can do much much more with far less than better known INGO's.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information
From: ard mhacha
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 02:36 PM

This is very informative if you are from the USA.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information
From: SINSULL
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 02:41 PM

Thanks, GUEST. After the September 11th fiasco, I ask a lot of questions before I give a donation. I'd rather mail it to a family in a town that was hit than add it to the coffers of an agency who will decide that it go elsewhere or nowhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 02:49 PM

note that some charities have a MUCH larger % of donations going to direct help. American Red Cross gets 90% to actual relief, while Save the Children spends 60+% on more fund raising, and only 34% to the needy.

The Charity Watch page for the American Institute for Philanthropy, noted above, will help you direct your donations wisely.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Dec 04 - 04:14 PM

It can help, but you have to remember not all the charity watchdog groups use the same criteria to evaluate the organizations.

ard mhacha, I don't know if there are UK & EU organizations like the ones I mention or not. The orgs I linked to have only just begun to start gathering this sort of information for the US and US affiliated orgs (like Int'l Red Cross). Sorry I can't be of more help in that regard.

However, the information on the "on the ground" realities of relief work apply universally. The development and relief industries are now a behemoth of a global industry, worth a LOT of money, and carrying a lot of political economic clout in many places. Because of the strings attached to aid, some countries choose not to accept aid. India, in fact, announced today that it would NOT be accepting aid from donor governments and international agencies like the IMF, for good reason. Whether that decision turns out to have been the right decision for India won't be known for quite some time. But that country does now have the ability to run it's own relief operations, and certainly wants to militarily control this very volatile part of their country (there are Tamil rebels in India as well as Sri Lanka, for instance), rather than have USAID crawling all over the place.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 30 Dec 04 - 03:34 AM

In the UK you can donate online at www.dec.org.uk
Also on US Amazon you can donate with OneClick

RtS

Subject: Red Cross
From: wysiwyg
Date: 30 Dec 04 - 06:51 AM

Red Cross disaster assistance to victims is about basic needs to sustain life-- water, shelter, food, clothing.

Red Cross advances funds for this purpose from reserves as soon as a disaster occurs. They don't wait for people to figure out what org to send their money to.

Thus, disaster contributions are deposited into the disaster fund, unless someone with a huge ego designates it can only go to a specific disaster.

If one is only willing to donate in order to stroke one's own ego, so that one can feel one has personally impacted a disaster of global proportions, one can limit the designation. Or one can send one's own personal blankie to an organization that would rather pay to ship a boatload of blankets, than help rebuild the affected area's economy by buying the blankets where the recipients live.

I prefer to think I donate in order to make ALL the world safer, and to me that means keeping the pooled funds up to a rapid-response level-- to ensure that people anywhere have the best chance possible of surviving the disaster. I don't feel a need to send my old used blanket and clothing-- I'd rather know people are getting the water they need and cash to pick out their own blanket and clothing.

The Red Cross is governed by people like us, at all levels. It's staffed by a few professionals directing hordes of volunteers.

~Former Red Cross Chapter Manager

Subject: RE: BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Dec 04 - 11:27 AM

God Susan, chill out. People should send money to whomever they feel like sending the money to, so long as the money gets used to the job intended.

No need to get all defensive just because YOUR charity has received some well intended and necessary criticism. That is the sort of constructive criticism and feedback everyone needs if we are going to improve and get better at things.

Sheesh.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information
From: wysiwyg
Date: 30 Dec 04 - 10:45 PM

First, it isn't "my" charity. Second, the 9/11 problems stemmed from the organization being asked to fulfill a role it normally does not-- being admin for more than immediate relief funds-- so I clarified what is their mission. Third, I posted correct information, and not out of a need to be defensive but so that people would have correct information SO WHEN THEY MAKE THEIR OWN CHOICE they can do it based on correct information. Fourth, the American Red Cross (the one I know) regularly studies all its operations with the aid of outside researchers and auditors, from the top level of the national organization to the local chapters.

It gets and keeps the top ratings it gets precisely because it pays attention to the kinds of administrative and operational issues that would prevent them from being there for the next disaster.

My post did nothing more than correct misinformation, just like we all tend to do around here-- whether it's about music, politics, or relief organizations.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Useful Disaster Relief Information
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 31 Dec 04 - 11:17 AM

Doctors Without Borders - Make a Donation   Very easy.