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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.
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Black Eye for the Red Cross - Continued
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* m2 stares at the monitor... it looks like a hamburger...
m2 - that's a bad sign
(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.