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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

#101

Post by NotOscarWilde »

mason240 wrote: post #46

There is a good analysis of this on skeptics stackexchange. http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27927/has-the-re... >TLDR: The article has accidentally or deliberately confused the earthquake relief project with the much smaller neighborhood renewal project, and attacked them both for not doing things they weren't intended to do. The Red Cross did much more in Haiti than build six houses.

Already in the TLDR there is a figure of speech used to attack a point: "accidentally or deliberately".

In neutral speech, there is no need to bring that up, as everything is either accidental or deliberate. Yet people use this to hint at the "deliberate" part of the phrase while having the other part in there for deniability.

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

#102

Post by comboy »

For those wanting to help, I highly recommend Givewell[1]. I imagine many of HN readers are (were) also lesswrong readers. This article[2] gives you some insight how Givewell evaluates organizations that they support.

[1] http://www.givewell.org/

[2] http://lesswrong.com/lw/cbs/thoughts_on_the_singularity_inst...

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

#104

Post by droithomme »

88e282102ae2e5b wrote: post #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.

The article also notes that other charities that said they would build houses were able to build thousands of houses. This suggests the land disputes claim was a made up excuse since other charities don't mention this, they just show the houses they built.

The temporary shelters shown are interesting. They are made with a few 2x4s as rafters, some tin panel roof, and press board on the outside. No water, toilet, etc. Appears to be under $500 in materials per family of several people per shelter. Press board of course in a humid rainy environment will disintegrate in a couple years, which is what happened. I wonder how many of these particular shelters can be verified that they built.

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

#105

Post by TeMPOraL »

TylerE wrote: post #94
duaneb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stuff can always be shipped from other parts of the world on the moment's notice if you have enough cash ready, so you don't necessarily need to stockpile it on site before anything happens. But what you can't really buy quickly is trained personnel that can organize relief works on site - this alone justifies having them as a standing organization.

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

#106

Post by lsym »

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…

Just wanted to note that even if each home is for one person, $500,000,000/130,000 is $3,846, not $384. If you assume the average family size is 5, that jumps to $19,230 per home.

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

#108

Post by droithomme »

justinpropub wrote: post #69
lucb1e wrote: post #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 thir…

Hi -- I'm Justin Elliott, one of the reporters on the piece, with Laura Sullivan of NPR. FWIW you should take a look at the ProPublica version of the story -- we get more into the numbers, and link to various documents: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-... To answer your question specifically about the neighborhood of Campeche: Zero houses have been built there by the Red Cross.

Hey Justin, great journalism here. Really good job.

Something I was wondering. Presumably those chintzy press-board shacks shown in the article that are predictably disintegrating are not in Campeche right? Were you guys able to survey how many and of what kinds of these ratty shacks they built and in what areas? They keep saying they provided housing to hundreds of thousands of people, I wonder how many of them are these shacks and tents. We know the number of real houses with toilets was 6, and I see that other charities had no problems building 9000 permanent houses with water and toilets and didn't run into all these land title disputes that Red Cross blames. Would be interesting to have independent data on what exactly they did do since they seem to be having a hard time verifying any of their own claims.

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

#109

Post by byjess »

ceejayoz wrote: post #100
jimrandomh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Charity Navigator Navigator is actually funded by Dow Chemical, FYI.

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

#110

Post by TylerE »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #105
TylerE wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stuff can always be shipped from other parts of the world on the moment's notice if you have enough cash ready, so you don't necessarily need to stockpile it on site before anything happens. But what you can't really buy quickly is trained personnel that can organize relief works on site - this alone justifies having them as a standing organization.

I don't think that's really. Lots of speciality goods like survival shelters actually CAN'T be ordered in large quantities on a moments notice. Something like bottle water or MREs, sure. But not so much durable goods.

Most manufacturers these days run super-lean, often not stockpiling inventory at all.

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