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

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

#91

Post by Brakenshire »

taki1 wrote: post #80
Brakenshire wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments are similarly inept at spending their money efficiently ... [big charities] will never get another cent out of me until at least one of their large scale disaster responses works out well...Because of the total lack of end-to-end accountability with organizations like the red cross... Your post is ideological - sweeping application of game-theory style logic, but without the evidence to suggest that the…

His post isn't ideological. Yours is.

I offer one empirical counter-example - with direct reference to easily verifiable evidence (public expenditure on healthcare as a percentage of GDP, and the differences between the levels of coverage of Medicare, Medicaid, and the NHS) - and then one request for proof, and not much else.

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

#92

Post by onion2k »

KJasper wrote: post #74
onion2k wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only way they can exist is by doing things so morally reprehensible that they have to keep everyone ignorant of their actions then they shouldn't exist.

That's great in theory, but should the people suffer more of Haiti because of these individuals? I'm guessing that none of these organisations could exist without compromising things for the greater good.

This assumes that the Red Cross is the only organisation that could help in Haiti, and that their approach is the only one that could possibly work. Neither of those things are necessarily true. If they're bribing people then they should report that - not the details (although maybe they should), but they should at least be saying "We raised $500m, and spent $50m on bribes so we could get the job of helping people done. It sucks but that's what we're working with here."

Also, at what point does "compromising things for the greater good" become untenable? To go down the argumentum ad absurdum route, if we learned that the Red Cross were hiring contract killers to eliminate officials that were standing in the way of building homes for Haitians would that be something they shouldn't do, or that they should do but they should keep quiet about? At some point it is right to say "Let's not do that even if it means people will suffer." That's definitely before killing people, obviously, but is it before bribing people?

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

#93

Post by tptacek »

lmm wrote: post #86
mckoss wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Seems like there is a market for durable "portable" structures that can be built on disputed land, and then moved if needed.

So you're suggesting a trailer park?

Sure. Millions of Americans reside in "trailer parks" at a standard of living that is the envy of much of the world, and surely orders of magnitude better than the situation in Cite de Dieu. Also, on their own terms, probably the envy of many a Manhattanite.

Haitians aren't looking for 2-car garages and island kitchens. Running water, electricity, and a structure that won't collapse in the next natural disaster would do just fine.

I imagine a challenge with deploying manufactured housing to Haiti is that anything new that's built needs to be earthquake-resistant.

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

#94

Post by TylerE »

duaneb wrote: post #89
RobertoG wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe is time for them to modernize of close. I think that Internet make possible new models of charities. A donation can be, at the same time, not local and very personalized. I would like to recommend watsi: https://watsi.org/ You can donate to concrete people and, they give you an accurate report, after the fact, of what happened. I think we need more charities like them. Maybe something with education? Disclaimer…

I don't think that would scale to disaster relief. You need to organize people on the ground and deal with problems.

More importantly you need to organize WELL in advance, before the specific need is known. If you wait until the hurricane actually HITS, you'll be weeks late getting shelter, food, etc, inbound. That stuff needs to be bought and warehoused in advance.

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

#95

Post by jjulius »

lsaferite wrote: post #21
Gupie wrote: 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 American Red Cross says it "provided homes" for more than 130,000 Haitians, but acknowledges that much of that is made up of people who went to a training seminar on how to fix their homes, received temporary rental help or lived in shelters like these in Bon Repos, which start to disintegrate after three to five years. Residents say they don't have bathrooms, kitchens or running water. I think the 130k people…

How about this little gem from their response[0] to the NPR article, where they talk about the "myth" that they call "temporary, or t-shelters, permanent homes."

> In no place has the Red Cross called a t-shelter a permanent home. We consistently refer to the range of housing solutions that the Red Cross has offered in Haiti to provide people safe housing.

So, essentially, they admit that they're not going to call it "permanent housing", but if they include those numbers under the banner of a "range of solutions" then they can continue to make public claims with numbers that look happy.

----

[0] http://www.redcross.org/news/press-release/13-Facts-about-th...

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

#96

Post by techpeace »

avar wrote: post #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.…

If you find that distressing, consider donating to https://givedirectly.org/ instead. They keep their admin costs very low, they're remarkably transparent, and all they do is hand your money over to the extremely poor - a tactic with a growing amount of empirical evidence supporting its efficacy.

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

#97

Post by TylerE »

mckoss wrote: post #30
meesterdude wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

From my memory, they had a reputation for bait and switch - raising money during a disaster, but spending it elsewhere. I think they cleaned that up, including a change in leadership. This article is new in claiming innefectiveness at usefully spending money to help disaster victims. I would love to see a detailed audit.

It's not that they are duplicitous really - it's that stockpiling large amounts of supplies has a leadtime measured in months. Money you give today can't buy tents in Haiti tomorrow - those have to be ordered, manufactured, shipped...

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

#100

Post by ceejayoz »

jimrandomh wrote: post #85
KingMob wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but I have a friend who worked in water quality in Haiti after the earthquake, and it's possible to get things done even with corruption and graft present. More likely, the Red Cross is one of many charitable organizations with low direct payout (combined with inexperience on the ground). This is a notorious problem, and was enabled by an earlier era of no-questions-asked donations. But in recent years, big…

No, don't go to Charity Navigator, go to Givewell ( http://www.givewell.com ). The quality of their research is much better, and they focus on the question that really matters: what effect your donation will have on the margin.

So now we need a Charity Navigator Navigator?
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