SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
After seeing problems with the Red Cross response local storm relief (example: 40% of available emergency vehicles used for press conferences), reporter Laura Sullivan decided to look into what happened in Haiti, where the American Red Cross collected a whopping $500 million in donations.
Her report is damning. The largest proportion of these were to go into housing. The Red Cross built...wait for it...six houses. In one area where the Red Cross promised to spend $24 million, and even printed a brochure exclaiming over all that they accomplished, the local residents are unaware of any Red Cross activity.
Meanwhile the Red Cross refuses to provide more than a very high level overview of their projects. No financial figures are provided that would allow one to figure out how much of that $500 million was actually spent on relief, and where the rest of it went.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:08AM
We can not trust our politicians, we cannot trust our charities, we cannot trust our government, we cannot trust our police.
This isn't how things were ever supposed to be.
Perhaps it's time we built something we CAN trust, and stop using people, because they keep failing us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:13AM
Human corruption is the problem. We need to get rid of them. There will be no more resource shortages with no mouths to feed and no chance of theft with no hands left alive. Total Genocide is the solution.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:23AM
You'd be surprised, but I agree. Our biology is problematic. Another solution is not to alter the environment, but ourselves. Going to mars might be easier not with a giant habitation dome, but if we are enhanced to survive the conditions bare. Creating housing for people might not be a problem if people didn't NEED houses to begin with. I do not consider the human body to be a machine that is so special it cannot be altered pulled apart and put back together like any other machine would be, or that we couldn't just create a new seed that's just better at survival than we are.
I just think drone technology is closer at hand to rapid build houses than genetic engineering is. Both solutions eliminate a 'big daddy' organization of people which appears to be the crux of the problem.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:29PM
Actually we don't strictly need houses (at least in most of the world); it's just damn more convenient to live in a house.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by penguinoid on Monday June 08 2015, @01:08AM
Is it really that convenient to live in a house (consider the cost/inconvenience of heating, repairing, maintaining individual kitchens, bathrooms, yard, etc)? Personally, I really enjoyed living in a dorm, with a cafeteria.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by Daiv on Monday June 08 2015, @02:19PM
The conveniences of living in a dorm did not outweigh the stress of loud, rude, sociopathic neighbors who ruined any chance of good resting periods. Not sleeping well for periods of time can lead to all kinds of problems. By the time some sort of dorm that addressed all of that would be planned and built, the cost of which likely wouldn't be much better than a small house.
(Score: 1) by penguinoid on Monday June 08 2015, @06:38PM
Sound-proofing isn't really that expensive.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @07:24PM
> Sound-proofing isn't really that expensive.
Said the person who has never actually tried to install effective sound-proofing.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:59PM
And that dorm was under open sky? I would bet it was in a house.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:38PM
I agree in principle, however there are severe limits on what can reasonably done in terms of adapting humans to alien environments.
>Going to mars might be easier not with a giant habitation dome, but if we are enhanced to survive the conditions bare
Good luck engineering humans to be fully photosynthetic at insolation levels 40% of what they are here on Earth, because our cells burn sugars and fats for energy, and you need free oxygen for that to happen, which is unavailable on Mars. There might also be potential for chemovores, but the power levels available there tend to be even lower, especially on a planet without significant tectonic activity - the source of most readily accessible non-biological chemical energy on Earth.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:46PM
Many have already tried the "pulling apart" part of it, but all of them failed the "put back together" one*
* At least under the assumption of "works as well as new or better"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:40PM
Human corruption is the problem. We need to get rid of them. There will be no more resource shortages with no mouths to feed and no chance of theft with no hands left alive. Total Genocide is the solution.
Read blessed scroll of genocide. Choose @ as class.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KGIII on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:35AM
I like to look into the various charities before I give them anything. It is amazing how many have absurd amounts for "overhead" and a small percentage goes to the actual work they claim to be doing. They have CEOs that are making absurd amounts of money (for an NPO) and a very low percentage of funds going to help. I do not donate to those. I have found this to be one of several helpful links on the subject:
https://www.charitywatch.org/ [charitywatch.org]
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:20AM
"All this work that you are looking at now, the calculation was made by Haitian people, Haitian engineers, Haitian architects, Haitian foreman," he says. "We know what to do."
The Red Cross does not seem to have used that strategy. In one internal memo, the top manager of the Haiti program complains that Haitians were not being hired for top positions — and in some cases were treated disparagingly.
It sounds like they're used to appearing in places where the infrastructure is basically gone, providing their own logistical support and keeping people alive until they can start their own rebuilding work, but have absolutely no clue how to handle supporting a rebuilding effort. This isn't normally a problem (it's fine for charities to limit the scope of their work - a 'fix the whole world' charity would have difficulty accomplishing anything), but in this case that had raised far more money than they could spend on their normal kind of relief work, but tried to spend it all anyway.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @02:16PM
CharityWatch.org is a great resource, but it's not the final word. You've got to do your own research and also pay attention to the press, for stories like this.
Unless the ARC puts together a decent rebuttal, which I doubt.
I guess I'll shift my annual RC contribution to other charities.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Sunday June 07 2015, @11:48PM
There is another thing that I do not like... If you donate to RC with a specific tragedy being the intended target of your funds they do not apply it to that target, the place the money in a general fund. My method has been to simply donate to the local chapter which, if I understand correctly, goes to that chapter alone and not to the parent charity. I also realize that putting things into a general fund is easier but I think it should not be much accounting work to take the major projects and keep track of the donations that are intended for those specifically.
When the recent earthquake trashed Nepal I did not donate to the RC. I did donate to the Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund, via the Ministry of Finance, directly. I feel that this was more likely to be beneficial in the long-run. The Nepalese government does not actually have a real problem with corruption. I suspect this is because they have no money.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Sunday June 07 2015, @05:34PM
I am actually surprised the overhead is that low with as many chapters at the ARC has.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 08 2015, @04:06AM
No, the Red Cross doesn't know how to show up in places where the infrastructure is basically gone and provide their own logistical support and keep people alive. At least, not if Haiti is representative. I know because I was centrally involved in coordinating the Haiti response. I was working for a former American President whose wife was running the State Dept. at the time. In 48 hours my team built the digital infrastructure that became the hub for the Red Cross, USAID, UN Logistics Cluster, State Dept, US Marines, and every other significant relief body on the planet; the marines on the USS Bataan that hovered offshore even told us they used our crowd-sourcing map for rescue missions to go dig people out of rubble because it was the only actionable intelligence in the theater (we had set up a map with Ushahidi that put pins at locations where people trapped in the rubble were texting from).
The entire time I kept asking the Red Cross, the UN, and every one of them what their systems were, what data formats they used, etc so that we could flow the cash and in-kind contributions and volunteers coming through us to them, and they. had. no. such. systems. It was as though it was the first time a disaster had ever happened in the history of the world, and they had utterly no idea what to do. So my team built something from scratch lickety-split and actually saved lives. The Red Cross landed a plane full of bottled water, food, and medicine at the tarmac in Port-au-Prince and promptly had it all stolen at gunpoint by black marketeers because they had apparently never come across the black market before and knew they needed to guard it and distribute it under guard. Penske Trucks donated a fleet of their trucks to Haiti to distribute supplies around the capitol and surrounding countryside, but they sat in the Port of Miami for months because nobody at the Red Cross knew that they had to get export permits or how to get them or how to get the trucks from the transport ship to the shore when the dock facilities at Port-au-Prince were knocked out. After about 3 months they managed to get tents up just in time for hurricane season, which is just gold stars for that one; then everybody in the tent encampments started to get cholera because it occurred to nobody at the Red Cross that you need to take sanitation measures in Refugee camps to prevent that kind of thing.
I kept asking and asking, how do you guys not know how to do this stuff? Is this not the sole thing that you do? But there was no answer, and no competent person ever came to the fore to straighten things out on the Red Cross's end, and you know that had there been there would have been some such to come forward because of the cachet of working directly with an American President who had gotten personally involved with the thing. It was then that I understood in one moment the truth of government and NGOs, that they comprise rich, connected kids who want to stamp their passport on the way to the CEO job at the family firm, and sycophants who like to go along for that ride. They are no place for skilled people who want to and can make a difference; I knew I wasn't long for that place, and I wasn't.
When I think back on the colossal, gigantic clusterfuck the Haiti Earthquake relief was, I feel a lot of frustration and contempt for all those who used that tragedy to line their pockets and advance their careers. The Red Cross people certainly did. Still, I do feel enormous satisfaction that I personally was able to use every technical skill acquired over a lifetime in IT to actually, directly, save lives, for the first time in my career. Sometimes I wonder if any of the lives I helped saved will turn out to be the person who cures cancer or something, but then I think that if it meant they got to hug their kids again then everything I've ever done as a professional was worth it. I sleep well on that.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:15AM
I will take the karma hit...
Allow me to say thank you for having done so and having posted your story. Both are appreciated.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 09 2015, @12:18PM
Thank you--I was grateful to have the chance to do something meaningful with my skills. Helping those people made me the happiest I've ever been.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by koick on Monday June 08 2015, @05:35AM
I would also like to give a shoutout to charitynavigator.org [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:12PM
I like to look into the various charities before I give them anything. It is amazing how many have absurd amounts for "overhead" and a small percentage goes to the actual work they claim to be doing.
I used to think like this. I still think like this to a large extent. However, this TED talk made me seriously reconsider it. You might want to take a listen.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong [ted.com]
For those without the time or inclination to watch or read the transcript, the short summary is as follows. Imagine you have two charities dedicated to a cause you agree with. The first, "NobelCause", has a 5% overhead rate and has raised $10,000. That's $9,500 for good purposes, which is good.
The second, "MarketDriven," has a 30% overhead rate but has raised $50,000 (through things like advertisement, which hits overhead). That's $35,000 for good purposes.
It's clear that $35,000 is better than $9,500... Personally speaking, I'm not prepared to endorse the high overhead rate of MarketDriven and them "wasting" the money I donate... but I can't exactly condemn them as they are effectively contributing 4x more money than NobelCause cause does...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @11:30PM
We can not trust our politicians, we cannot trust our charities, we cannot trust our government, we cannot trust our police.
These are the precise scenarios that gamers have been telling everyone about and even training for.
Perhaps it's time we built something we CAN trust, and stop using people, because they keep failing us.
Welcome to Gamergate.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:57PM
From what I can tell "Gamergate" is some idiots doing stupid things followed by other idiots responding to them. Chaos ensues as per any reality TV show.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"