A few days ago, I submitted the story about the article criticizing the Red Cross' use of funds in Haiti. Purely by coincidence, I just tripped across an interview on Reddit: the two authors of the article answering questions from the public. To make things even more interesting, Jonathan Garro from the Red Cross also jumped in to provide a counterpoint.
I have no axe to grind here: I donate to the local Red Cross, and am therefore interested to know whether the organization makes effective use of the money it receives.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 17 2015, @09:34AM
Having read most of that AMA, I have to say the authors of the report come across as dishonest and sensationalist. They strike me as a couple of first-world dickheads wandering around Haiti five years after the quake saying "Well I don't see how hard it is to build a bunch of houses here. Where's the receipt for that well?"
They keep banging on about how the Red Cross only built 6 houses with half a billion dollars, and utterly refuse to acknowledge that the RC actually provided 800000+ tarps, food, water, temporary shelters, repairs, training and more. Turns out you can't just roll up to an earthquake-smashed city in a notoriously corrupt third-world country and start building houses left and right. There are all kinds of legal, social and logistical obstacles to overcome. The RC quickly realised that attempting to do so would be a complete waste of donation money.
I have (very limited) experience trying to fix things in post-tsunami Sri Lanka, and all I can say is that disaster relief is by no means easy on any level, and in those sort of circumstances you can't expect to get things done and have a nice tidy pile of receipts for everything. I would be very wary of any criticism from anyone who hasn't had extensive first-hand experience of trying to organise disaster relief in similar circumstances.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @12:37PM
I wouldn't call them dickheads, in fact they made the same point that you just repeated, that it is very difficult to spend the kind of money the ARC solicited, collected and budgeted, in a cost-effective manner in such a backward country with a government rife with corruption.
Here's the link (embedded in the Reddit AMA) to the ARC's response:
http://www.redcross.org/news/article/The-Real-Story-of-the-6-Homes-Answering-Questions-about-Haiti [redcross.org]
At the bottom they provide this accounting:
The Red Cross reports annually how we spend donor dollars on our website and break it down according to sector. We raised $488 million for our work in Haiti and here is how our spent and committed funds have been allocated:
Emergency relief: $66 million
Shelter: $173 million
Health: $73 million
Water and sanitation: $47 million
Livelihoods: $48 million
Disaster preparedness: $56 million
Cholera prevention: $25 million
I didn't add up those numbers but I'm sure it comes up to $488 million. But that's not very satisfying, is it? How much of that money went to grease the palms of corrupt officials, were spent on expenses of officials or paid consultants flying around or holding stateside meetings ineffectively, were used on projects that didn't produce worthwhile results? That table still doesn't answer the question "Where did all the donated money go to?"
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 17 2015, @01:29PM
Well, that's not the point they seemed to be making in the AMA. All I got from there was a repeated wail of "but only six houses were built", which seems to be dodging the issue entirely.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @01:23PM
Turns out you can't just roll up to an earthquake-smashed city in a notoriously corrupt third-world country and start building houses left and right.
This is very true. My church has been involved in that country for about 30 years now. In that time I think we managed to build 30 buildings (1-2 per year). The level of corruption is pretty intense. It got so bad we would just get a group of people together and go build them ourselves. If I remember correctly they stopped going because of the threats of violence if we didnt pay up. So they started building in local areas that needed it too.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2015, @02:25PM
Maybe they shouldn't have made all the claims in their press release then, eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @07:21AM
I think you missed the part where Red Cross got half a billion and built 6. Whereas other organizations built 5,700 (or more?): http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/world/americas/years-after-haiti-quake-safe-housing-is-dream-for-multitudes.html [nytimes.com]
Perhaps Red Cross built most of the 125,000 temporary shelters in Haiti using the half a billion. In which case then perhaps it's not so bad. But if they didn't then it does look bad.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday June 18 2015, @11:37AM
No, I think you missed the part where I specifically referenced those numbers in the post you replied to.