Teaching America What Haiti Needs: Money

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In a NY Times article, Stephanie Strom writes about the importance of providing the necessary type of assistance with regard to the Haitian relief efforts.

Don’t send shoes, send money. Don’t send baby formula, send money. Don’t send old coats, send money.

Nonprofit groups rarely look a gift horse in the mouth, and the relief effort in Haiti is desperate for resources. But the experience of wasteful giving in the past, coupled with the ease of speaking out via blogs, Facebook and Twitter, have led to an unprecedented effort to teach Americans what not to give.

One particularly influential blog is being written by Saundra Schimmelpfennig, an international aid expert who once worked for the Red Cross. Ms. Schimmelpfennig’s blog, Good Intentions Are Not Enough, is attracting more hits in a day than it used to get in a month, as everyone from the State Department to the White House seeks information about giving.

The advice appears to be reaching a tipping point — former President George W. Bush echoed the message when he joined President Obama and former President Bill Clinton to announce a new venture for the Haitian relief effort.

Every aid worker has a favorite story about useless donations. Raymond Offenheiser, the president of Oxfam America, the United States branch of the British relief group, recalled being in Bangladesh after a cyclone had killed 200,000 people and watching local women trying to make sense out of French TV dinners — “complete with croissant,” he said — that required a microwave.

Mr. Offenheiser of Oxfam said he thought more policy makers and advisers were becoming aware of the inefficiency of disaster giving. He noted that Mr. Clinton had spent a lot of time talking with and learning from relief agencies when he served as the United Nations special envoy for recovery after the tsunami, and that Gayle Smith, the National Security Council official responsible for dealing with issues of international aid, has deep experience with relief programs.

He also noted that many Americans have first-hand experience with the aftermath of major disaster because so many people went to the Gulf Coast to volunteer after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“These people saw donated clothing piled three and four stories high in parking lots all over the area that was soaking wet and being consumed by mildew, and they went home and talked about what they saw,” Mr. Offenheiser said. “They saw first-hand how inappropriate some of the resources were that were donated.”

To read the complete article