

Don't give money [that's restricted] to Haiti - petewarden
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/01/15/dont-give-money-to-haiti/

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mrduncan
It's unfortunate that he had to use such a link-bait headline on an otherwise
very insightful essay. A more accurate title would have been "Don't give money
to only Haiti".

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petewarden
I agree. I was reluctant to change the author's headline, but I've just edited
it to include [restricted to]. It does seem like an important story to anyone
looking at donating.

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tobiasrose
I've been doing aid/development work for several years. The process of
disaster giving right now is unfortunately deeply flawed.

Most aid workers are already on Facebook, and there are a lot of them. A
guided social-giving application which allowed people to find personal
connections to development workers within degrees of their actual social
network would be more efficient. Money would flow based on degrees of trust,
not hearsay or marketing.

An app allowing people direct access to professionals their friends trust
would increase accountability and help people personally engage with and fund
projects over time, regardless of the size of the organization.

~~~
teej
Isn't that what Causes is for?

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randv
I agree with the unrestricted donation part. My money went MSF primarily
because they had a staff of more than 700 people before the earth quake struck
and knew how to help the country.

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jcsalterego
For me, MSF's draw has always been their great accountability, much lower
overhead and coverage that extends beyond those 50/100/200-year natural
disasters.

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ErrantX
Agreed. MSF is the only large charity I would consider donating too.

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seldo
Alternatively, if you'd like to help Haiti specifically don't give money to
large international charities. They are the McDonald's of humanitarian
assistance: big, generic, and predictable, but not necessarily the best
available.

My family has friends who lived in Haiti for many years, and they are holding
back on donating to the large charities on the basis that the real need for
funds will be at native Haitian organizations, which will take a few months to
get back on their feet and be able to accept donations.

If you'd like to help Haiti specifically, that's still an admirable impulse,
but your money will be better spent if you give it to actual Haitians (and it
will require some effort to work out which ones).

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jing
Charity isn't always about being as "effective" as possible. People there are
literally dying from not having food, water, and medical care. I hate to say
this on hacker news, but not _everything_ is a numbers game. Haiti is in a
humanitarian crisis right now. Yes, you could logically say to yourself that X
dollars would be more "effective" elsewhere and that Haiti will never become a
flourishing country, but that largely misses the point. It also presumes that
you have the balls to say who should live and who should die. People there
need help. Now.

A good charity I donated to is Partners in Health which was founded in Haiti
(by an American) and has always been in Haiti. You can read more about them in
"Mountains Beyond Mountains" which coincidentally and topically was written by
Tracy Kidder who also wrote "Soul of a new Machine".

~~~
jodrellblank
_"""People there are literally dying from not having food, water, and medical
care."""_

Like tens of thousands of people around the world every day. This is different
in the media attention it has, and possibly in the geographic concentration of
suffering but not in the numbers of suffering people or the type of suffering.
People in Haiti were so poor they were _eating mud_ to prolong their lives not
long ago.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/29/food.internation...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/29/food.internationalaidanddevelopment)

People need help _now_ , but they also needed help _then_ when nobody was
listening. It's not horrible and callous to point this out, it doesn't mean I
think helping in Haiti now is a bad thing and it doesn't mean I don't feel
unhappy at the level of suffering in Haiti, but ->

 _"""I hate to say this on hacker news, but not everything is a numbers game
[..] but that largely misses the point."""_

If the point is not "help as many people as possible" then what _is_ it? I
don't want to put words in your mouth, but it can't be "help the most talked
about issue of the moment", or "help whatever makes you feel most guilty", can
it?

It's not a game, but it is a numbers thing - if what the article says is
accurate then a considered response where you give to MSF instead of Yele
might be helping more people. If you want to ignore things like this in your
hurry then who is helped?. But if you want to help Haiti 'now now now' then
giving to MSF who 'have enough for their Haiti operations for a decade' will
not have any immediate effect. If more money isn't going to help, that's an
incredibly important thing to consider if all you can do is give money from a
long way away.

A considered action is not inherently worse than an ill considered action and
the conflicts you present between thinking vs acting, wanting to help vs
choosing who lives and who dies and being human vs considering are false,
unhelpful.

 _"""It also presumes that you have the balls to say who should live and who
should die."""_

Humans make the live/die decision a _lot_ , medical treatments have it
implicitly, all changes to building codes to make buildings safer, all
policies on water cleanliness, all women and children first habits. By
choosing to help Haiti you are making the live/die decision for all the others
you don't help.

Ignoring it doesn't make it go away, and thinking about it does not make a
horrible callous person who is trying to play God.

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Maven911
Your over-analyzing makes your post seem very cold and callous. Yes it's
getting a lot of media attention and people are pouring in money...so
what..the alternative would be to simply ignore everything like the rest of
the world suffering year-round.

~~~
jodrellblank
_"""Your over-analyzing makes your post seem very cold and callous."""_

It does, but it shouldn't (or maybe it should and I am?). The parent post was
exhorting me to act without thinking, and that sets off my skeptical spidey
sense and makes me ask what's in it for them? It's a pressure tactic that
people selling things use to get me to make a worse decision than I would
otherwise make. In the case of helping people, making a worse decision is,
well, worse.

A read of the article suggests that donating to some cause would be of no
particular help, donating elsewhere might go to a celebrity's recording studio
fees, and doing it one way might lead to it sitting in a bank account for five
years being unable to help anyone. How far is over-analyzing and how far
merely analyzing?

"""Yes it's getting a lot of media attention and people are pouring in
money...so what"""

So the need for me to act immediately is less. So it's presenting a distorted
and unbalanced view of problems in the world with the potential of over
assigning to one cause and at the same time increasing suffering elsewhere
because resources are reduced. So the media has a habit of turning everything
into extremely opposed black and white views and a huge media fuss makes it
more difficult to sift out accurate and detailed information on a topic. So a
huge media fuss increases social pressure to 'donate now' without thinking and
without regard for whether lack of cash is a main bottleneck or not.

 _"""the alternative would be to simply ignore everything like the rest of the
world suffering year-round"""_

That's another issue. Why is it that we happily go about our lives every day
doing just that, but it's not OK to do that now? Isn't that part of the media
fuss generating social pressure so that people act to be seen to be donating
rather than for any other reason? Very much an 'ends justify the means'
approach?

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clay
The GiveWell organization gave similar sentiments:
[http://blog.givewell.net/2010/01/13/haiti-earthquake-
donatio...](http://blog.givewell.net/2010/01/13/haiti-earthquake-donations/)

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dylanz
I donated to Direct Relief, and I hope it helps.

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almerfudge
the CNN reporters driving around in an empty pickup truck talking about no
medical suppies .why don,t they go and get some this is making me sick...

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almerfudge
Obama should get off his ass and get things moving

