Help for Haiti: send energy, not clutter. (thinky post is thinky)
Ramble:
What's needed in Haiti is energy. Energy to keep calling for help from the rubble. Energy to shift the rubble. Energy to keep looking at what was your house, your street, your town, and is now rubble, to keep looking for life, for food, for water, for your friends, for a reason. Energy to come in 4 days later from your well-fed country with food and water and heavy equipment and find no road you can use, no single complete system working because each one has lost key components, key people, has lost energy in the impact of one tectonic plate against another so that in a moment, a few seconds, years of work are gone, concrete walls, gardens, phone wires, water pipes, schools, churches, neighborhoods, the men who unload at the port and drive the trucks from place to place, and the women who cook and who dress the children, and the children who sing and smile and tease one another, you need energy to come into that 4 days later and not break down, not shut down, not dismiss their loss because it's too big to take in and focus only on your task, your list of things to do, energy to be another human being and not a savior. What's needed is not a savior. What's needed is your energy. Bring that.
/ramble
Haiti: Help with money, not stuff
After every major disaster, misguided donations actually worsen the suffering.
By David Case - GlobalPost
Published: January 13, 2010 18:27 ET
BOSTON - The images emerging from Haiti’s massive earthquake are gut-wrenching. As usual in such disasters, Americans are responding generously. Millions of dollars will be raised.
If you’re considering doing your part, that’s great. But, experts say, whatever you do, don’t donate anything but money. Under no circumstances should you mail care packages, toys, food or clothes. Don’t even think about sending drugs. The response to prior disasters shows that regardless of your intentions, you will only be making matters worse.
That’s what happened in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami. The disaster was followed by an unprecedented outpouring of global generosity. This dramatically facilitated the grisly chore of cleaning up the tens of thousands of bodies left under the tropical sun, and it funded a reconstruction effort that, while far from perfect, provided roofs over the heads of many.
But aid workers joked that the real tsunami was followed by another tsunami - of misguided goodwill. In an effort to help, people shipped boxes, often following the instructions of local television news programs. And so in Aceh, Indonesia amid the trauma, hunger and devastation, care packages piled up containing everything from pajamas and teddy bears to birth control pills and Bibles - a hodgepodge impossible to sort through. There were boxes filled with half-used ointments and prescription drugs, as if do-gooders had cleaned out their medicine cabinets. And some unscrupulous corporations - exploiting tax write-offs for soon-to-be-expired pharmaceuticals - apparently shipped whatever had been lying around the warehouse for too long.
It all amounted to a mountain of materials that confounded the efforts of the pros, and made it more difficult to deliver essential supplies on the earthquake-ravaged roads.
Months after the aftershocks stopped, the French aid organization Pharmaciens Sans Frontieres (Pharmacists Without Borders) conducted a study of that second tsunami. In a world where most people lack adequate access to medicine, the results were a travesty.
The group found that although officials didn’t request any medicine, they received 4,000 metric tons of it, or more than 4 pounds for each person in the tsunami-affected area. There were multiple-year supplies of antibiotics, and palette loads of drugs unknown to health care providers. Seventy percent of it was labeled in a language that locals did not understand.
Disasters like the Haiti earthquake and the Indian Ocean tsunami present colossal logistical challenges. Nonetheless, in Aceh officials and relief workers did their best to sort through this stock: Drugs were stored in private homes, in hospitals rooms and corridors (despite a desperate shortage of space for patients). Eighty-four percent of the facilities lacked air conditioning, rendering their contents unusable, according to the study. A large depot near Aceh’s airport was so overwhelmed that mountains of pricey pharmaceuticals were dumped outside to rot under the monsoons and tropical sun.
Of course, the donors were only trying to help, but misplaced intentions actually worsened the suffering. Buried under care packages and out of date antibiotics labeled in Thai and Chinese were the world’s most advanced malaria medications. Meanwhile along the coast, people who had just lost homes and families writhed in malarial fever for lack of treatment.
In the end, most of the drugs had to be incinerated - you can’t simply send such a stock to the dump, where it would seep into the ground water and create another health hazard. That cost donors and the Indonesian government millions.
Aceh was by no means unusual in this regard. Massive shipments of useless medicine arrived on the scenes of other heavily televised disasters, such as the Armenian earthquake in 1988 and the Albanian exodus from Kosovo in the late 1990s. After the war ended in Bosnia, 17,000 tons of inappropriate donations had to be burned, according to Pharmaciens Sans Frontieres. Aid workers struggling to ease suffering after Hurricane Mitch reportedly worked late into the night sorting through half-used tubes of Preparation H and opened bottles of Prozac.
Such harmful donations will almost certainly flood Haiti as well in the coming days. But if you want to help, send money to a reputable aid group instead.
Editor's note: This story was updated to correct a figure concerning the amount of aid distributed to Aceh victims of the December 2004 tsunami. Officials received more than 4 pounds for each person in the tsunami-affected area, rather than 8 pounds for each person in the province as previously stated.
I'm not an economist. I've done some thinking about money, energy, value, worth, but it's unfinished and somewhat fuzzy, and I only know what I've worked out for myself.
I make $20/hour, just about. Before taxes, before anything's taken out. I know it's good money, even though it's not what I'd make working in hospital. It's good money. It's a mark of how my time, my energy, is valued, and it's a tool I can use to work out how I want to trade my energy in the world.
So, for every $20 I send to Haiti, to Medicins Sans Frontieres, to Unicef, I'm sending an hour of my time. An hour of a trained RN's time, an hour of the hands of an older but still capable woman whose specialty is creating safety and comfort in a time of fear and chaos. I can't send my expertise directly. I can't send my energy directly. I can't go myself: I'd be a burden, right now, with my own health needs, my age. But I can send money -my energy's earnings- to those I know will use it well, and my energy will support their expertise.
[note: GlobalPost article came to me in my inbox in gmail today, but is also up at Viggo-Works, and in a friend's LJ, so *waves* to them, too. signal boost, and all that.]
What's needed in Haiti is energy. Energy to keep calling for help from the rubble. Energy to shift the rubble. Energy to keep looking at what was your house, your street, your town, and is now rubble, to keep looking for life, for food, for water, for your friends, for a reason. Energy to come in 4 days later from your well-fed country with food and water and heavy equipment and find no road you can use, no single complete system working because each one has lost key components, key people, has lost energy in the impact of one tectonic plate against another so that in a moment, a few seconds, years of work are gone, concrete walls, gardens, phone wires, water pipes, schools, churches, neighborhoods, the men who unload at the port and drive the trucks from place to place, and the women who cook and who dress the children, and the children who sing and smile and tease one another, you need energy to come into that 4 days later and not break down, not shut down, not dismiss their loss because it's too big to take in and focus only on your task, your list of things to do, energy to be another human being and not a savior. What's needed is not a savior. What's needed is your energy. Bring that.
/ramble
Haiti: Help with money, not stuff
After every major disaster, misguided donations actually worsen the suffering.
By David Case - GlobalPost
Published: January 13, 2010 18:27 ET
BOSTON - The images emerging from Haiti’s massive earthquake are gut-wrenching. As usual in such disasters, Americans are responding generously. Millions of dollars will be raised.
If you’re considering doing your part, that’s great. But, experts say, whatever you do, don’t donate anything but money. Under no circumstances should you mail care packages, toys, food or clothes. Don’t even think about sending drugs. The response to prior disasters shows that regardless of your intentions, you will only be making matters worse.
That’s what happened in the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami. The disaster was followed by an unprecedented outpouring of global generosity. This dramatically facilitated the grisly chore of cleaning up the tens of thousands of bodies left under the tropical sun, and it funded a reconstruction effort that, while far from perfect, provided roofs over the heads of many.
But aid workers joked that the real tsunami was followed by another tsunami - of misguided goodwill. In an effort to help, people shipped boxes, often following the instructions of local television news programs. And so in Aceh, Indonesia amid the trauma, hunger and devastation, care packages piled up containing everything from pajamas and teddy bears to birth control pills and Bibles - a hodgepodge impossible to sort through. There were boxes filled with half-used ointments and prescription drugs, as if do-gooders had cleaned out their medicine cabinets. And some unscrupulous corporations - exploiting tax write-offs for soon-to-be-expired pharmaceuticals - apparently shipped whatever had been lying around the warehouse for too long.
It all amounted to a mountain of materials that confounded the efforts of the pros, and made it more difficult to deliver essential supplies on the earthquake-ravaged roads.
Months after the aftershocks stopped, the French aid organization Pharmaciens Sans Frontieres (Pharmacists Without Borders) conducted a study of that second tsunami. In a world where most people lack adequate access to medicine, the results were a travesty.
The group found that although officials didn’t request any medicine, they received 4,000 metric tons of it, or more than 4 pounds for each person in the tsunami-affected area. There were multiple-year supplies of antibiotics, and palette loads of drugs unknown to health care providers. Seventy percent of it was labeled in a language that locals did not understand.
Disasters like the Haiti earthquake and the Indian Ocean tsunami present colossal logistical challenges. Nonetheless, in Aceh officials and relief workers did their best to sort through this stock: Drugs were stored in private homes, in hospitals rooms and corridors (despite a desperate shortage of space for patients). Eighty-four percent of the facilities lacked air conditioning, rendering their contents unusable, according to the study. A large depot near Aceh’s airport was so overwhelmed that mountains of pricey pharmaceuticals were dumped outside to rot under the monsoons and tropical sun.
Of course, the donors were only trying to help, but misplaced intentions actually worsened the suffering. Buried under care packages and out of date antibiotics labeled in Thai and Chinese were the world’s most advanced malaria medications. Meanwhile along the coast, people who had just lost homes and families writhed in malarial fever for lack of treatment.
In the end, most of the drugs had to be incinerated - you can’t simply send such a stock to the dump, where it would seep into the ground water and create another health hazard. That cost donors and the Indonesian government millions.
Aceh was by no means unusual in this regard. Massive shipments of useless medicine arrived on the scenes of other heavily televised disasters, such as the Armenian earthquake in 1988 and the Albanian exodus from Kosovo in the late 1990s. After the war ended in Bosnia, 17,000 tons of inappropriate donations had to be burned, according to Pharmaciens Sans Frontieres. Aid workers struggling to ease suffering after Hurricane Mitch reportedly worked late into the night sorting through half-used tubes of Preparation H and opened bottles of Prozac.
Such harmful donations will almost certainly flood Haiti as well in the coming days. But if you want to help, send money to a reputable aid group instead.
Editor's note: This story was updated to correct a figure concerning the amount of aid distributed to Aceh victims of the December 2004 tsunami. Officials received more than 4 pounds for each person in the tsunami-affected area, rather than 8 pounds for each person in the province as previously stated.
I'm not an economist. I've done some thinking about money, energy, value, worth, but it's unfinished and somewhat fuzzy, and I only know what I've worked out for myself.
I make $20/hour, just about. Before taxes, before anything's taken out. I know it's good money, even though it's not what I'd make working in hospital. It's good money. It's a mark of how my time, my energy, is valued, and it's a tool I can use to work out how I want to trade my energy in the world.
So, for every $20 I send to Haiti, to Medicins Sans Frontieres, to Unicef, I'm sending an hour of my time. An hour of a trained RN's time, an hour of the hands of an older but still capable woman whose specialty is creating safety and comfort in a time of fear and chaos. I can't send my expertise directly. I can't send my energy directly. I can't go myself: I'd be a burden, right now, with my own health needs, my age. But I can send money -my energy's earnings- to those I know will use it well, and my energy will support their expertise.
[note: GlobalPost article came to me in my inbox in gmail today, but is also up at Viggo-Works, and in a friend's LJ, so *waves* to them, too. signal boost, and all that.]