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In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

npr.org

11–20 of 215 posts

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#11
post #8

$500M sound like a large sum. It is if that is you personal wealth. However for Haiti with a population of over 10M it is only $50 per head. According to the article the Red Cross built shelters for 130,000 people. The would be $384 per shelter if that was all the Red Cross did. But they also fed people, provided clean water, medical aid... It is easy to attack big charities. You get support from people who feel guil…

The article later clarifies that the Red Cross did not, in fact, build shelters for 130,000 people. According to the Red Cross' documentation, many of those people attended a seminar on home repair or were provided temporary shelters.

This is not the first time the Red Cross has had problems aseembling or executing a cohesive plan. Indeed, this seems to be a problem all of these large aid organization suffer.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#12
post #8

$500M sound like a large sum. It is if that is you personal wealth. However for Haiti with a population of over 10M it is only $50 per head. According to the article the Red Cross built shelters for 130,000 people. The would be $384 per shelter if that was all the Red Cross did. But they also fed people, provided clean water, medical aid... It is easy to attack big charities. You get support from people who feel guil…

I think I agree with the sentiment, but your per shelter example is a poor one, it should be "per person sheltered". And any examples would benefit from comparisons to regional costs.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#13
post #10
post #5

This organization is doing good work in Haiti, check it out: http://mohhaiti.org/ They get a stellar rating; to my recollection, 96% of donated funds go to the cause (4% overhead). They're an overtly Christian organization, which may or may not be your thing. But they're doing good work. Disclaimer: A company I worked for did some work for them a couple of years ago. I'm no longer affiliated in any way.

I don't agree that the modern Red Cross has anything to do with Christianity. I've never heard of them evangelizing or take any position on religion. Why do you think that?

I believe they mean that the Mission of Hope program that they mention is overtly Christian.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#14
Their defense is pretty weak. Essentially they're claiming the reason houses didn't get built was because they didn't know how to build them, or that there were land disputes. All of which are true. But that should have prevented them from spending any significant amount of money.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#15
post #8

$500M sound like a large sum. It is if that is you personal wealth. However for Haiti with a population of over 10M it is only $50 per head. According to the article the Red Cross built shelters for 130,000 people. The would be $384 per shelter if that was all the Red Cross did. But they also fed people, provided clean water, medical aid... It is easy to attack big charities. You get support from people who feel guil…

It's $166/head counting every person in the area affected by the earthquake, and $2000/house counting all the houses destroyed by the earthquake. Most Haitians did not lose their homes to the quake.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#16
The biggest revelation to me in that article, which I feel should be highlighted more, is that the Red Cross provides almost zero information about how it spends its money.

It refuses to provide more than very vague information about how the money was spent in Haiti (information like "35% of $488 million on shelters"), with no specific details about what projects they spent the money on, how those projects went etc.

When the author challenged the general counsel of the Red Cross to provide more detailed information ("because clearly you must have it") he just gave her some evasive boilerplate spiel about having provided the summary information he'd provided already.

How can anyone donate to a charity that's so stunningly opaque about how it spends its money?

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#17

I'm building an app that utilizes people giving to charities - red cross seemed like an obvious choice to include, but now there's no way. This has been helpful in sleuthing out reputable charities: http://www.charitynavigator.org/

I would not let a single news story exclude you from including them. I've seen too many cases where journalists completely botch an investigative story due to biased sources and their own ignorance.

I personally would like to see the Red Cross's response.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#18
Wait. Didn't VICE do an excellent expose on this very topic, relief capitalism? edit: they call it disaster capitalism, but relief capitalism is also a real thing.

Pretty sure it's not the full episode, but this is a summary of the episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNM4kEUEcp8

America's dirty little secret is that the majority of our "aid" is really not aid at all an not really meant for aiding and assisting. This is not really a new thing. It's actually a very old and disastrous thing.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#19
TL;DR (the informational bits):

> First the Red Cross took a customary administrative cut, then the charities that received the money took their own fees. And then, according to the Red Cross' records, the charity took out an additional amount to pay for what it calls the "program costs incurred in managing" these third-party projects.

> In one of the programs reviewed by NPR and ProPublica, these costs ate up a third of the money that was supposed to help Haitians.

[...]

> said that a fifth of the money the charity raised would go to "provide tens of thousands of people with permanent homes ... where we develop brand-new communities ... including water and sanitation."

> The charity built six permanent homes and, according to their own account, no new communities.

[...]

> the project manager [...] was entitled to allowances for housing, food and other expenses, home leave trips, R&R four times a year, and relocation expenses. In all, including salary, it added up to $140,000.

---

These are the only factual bits I can find. I'm not saying the rest is untrue, but they include statements from locals who "cannot see that $24 million has been spent here," whatever that means.

Another example is where it says "first, the plan was to build houses," then going on to describe that people are still living in tents. But how many people live in tents? What percentage? How many houses were actually built? Or did they build 10 villas and leave the rest in tents? There is no real information that I can find.

A bit further on, it does include this:

> The original plan was to build 700 new homes with living rooms and bathrooms. The Red Cross says it ran into problems acquiring land rights.

... so then out of the 700, how many were built? It doesn't say anything about that.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#20
post #17

I'm building an app that utilizes people giving to charities - red cross seemed like an obvious choice to include, but now there's no way. This has been helpful in sleuthing out reputable charities: http://www.charitynavigator.org/

I would not let a single news story exclude you from including them. I've seen too many cases where journalists completely botch an investigative story due to biased sources and their own ignorance. I personally would like to see the Red Cross's response.

FWIW, they have something of a history if I recall; i only recently found out a few days ago, really.
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