

Ask (Challenge? Beg?) HN: How to get help from here to there. - t5

Hi, longtime admirer, first-time poster.  Please don't laugh but to make a long story short, one of my part time jobs while finishing my coursework is as a barista at Starbucks.<p>I'm trying to organize a drive effort to get as many coworkers as possible to donate a week's worth of tips and a week or two worth of the free coffee we get to ship overseas as part of the continuing relief effort for Japan.<p>All my ongoing research so far indicates that there is a huge discrepancy between the "everything will soon be under control" image in the media and the reality of people who still have many, many challenges to overcome at the local level (kinda like Katrina).<p>Just yesterday there was a front page New York Times article about a viral video on YouTube not too long ago where a mayor of a small town in northern Japan put his pride aside and literally bared his soul in front of the YouTube community and told everyone that his village is slowly starving to death.<p>The biggest problem I have so far is overcoming the logistical hurdle of getting items from the store-level to a central area and then from there to Japan where there are plenty of groups/organizations/local governments who say they'll gladly welcome anything they don't have to pay the shipping fees for.<p>I've tried working with FedEx, but they keep referring me to the Red Cross, whose official position seems to boil down to "Nobody wants food, just send money."<p>Other companies seem to have a mind-meld with Red Cross PR as well.<p>My attempt to reply with a photo taken from a story in a Japanese news site of people holding signs that translated to "We can't eat money, please send food and supplies" made no difference whatsoever.<p>Anyway, you people seem to be much smarter than me so I'm putting this out there; think of it as an intellectual challenge whose answer would be appreciated by many, many people:<p>How would you, if you were me, overcome the logistical challenge of shipping free donations?<p>I found excellent agencies that can deliver the non-perishable foodstuffs (mostly instant coffee), I've found a charity that specializes in, among other things, a website with "live maps" of food caches that people can figure out how to travel to (keep in mind the area is mountainous, and transportation is limited due to lack of automobiles, gas, and destroyed infrastructure).<p>I can't figure out how to get the stuff there without just, you know, paying FedEx to ship it, which would kind of make the whole money-raising aspect pointless.<p>Any and all ideas would be welcomed.<p>Thank you for your consideration.
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kovar
I fear the following will sound rather negative. If you're only looking for
positive suggestions, please skip over this. I know you mean well and I wish I
could offer you more encouragement. Hopefully others are able to do so.

I'm writing this with more than ten years of experience providing
international response search and rescue services. We got started after
getting frustrated by our inability to get obviously needed supplies into
disaster zones. It turned out to be easier to provide services. Along the way
we learned a lot about the road blocks and solutions.

I've seen warehouses full of supplies from the US donated by well meaning
charities. Thousands of people donated clothing, packaged it up, shipped it
out, and expected to make a difference. But there it sat, rotting in the heat
and humidity. The intended recipients thought "those damned stupid Americans,
sending us stuff we don't need." The donors thought "those lazy recipients,
not putting our goodwill to use."

There are valid reasons why the Red Cross and other agencies say "Just send
money." Just because a disaster has occurred doesn't mean that customs
inspections stop, or taxes aren't collected.

A clip about one mayor's village doesn't accurately portray the entire
picture, including what is already in the pipeline, if they'll still be there
the next week, and the logistical problems of getting anything there.

You can send money in seconds. Supplies take days, or weeks, and these
situations are very fluid. Send the money and it can adapt to the current
situation. Send supplies and they'll rot, and possibly clog the network, if
the situation has changed.

Getting "the stuff" from here to the port in Japan doesn't take care of all
the distribution past that point. For starters, someone needs to break down
your containers into smaller packages and route them via whatever means are
available to their intended destination. (And those means are already shipping
other things.)

And someone needs to track what is still needed, what has arrived, what is in
transit, etc.

There are a lot of very complex pieces to the puzzle. The Red Cross and the
other agencies know how to fit them together _relatively_ well. Let them
continue to do so rather than reinventing the tools, processes, and
relationships they've already developed over many years.

~~~
t5
David, your experience is obviously a valid basis for your views.

Please don't take my response as a disregard for your advice, because I've
read your entire post and I agree with everything you've said - to a point.

No disrespect to your past experience. I'm having a hard time mentally with
this effort and I've only been doing it as an amateur for a bit over three
weeks.

Having said that, I respectfully, let's see how to say this, not so much
"disagree" but maybe "semi-agree" with the issues you highlight:

>> those damned stupid Americans, sending us stuff we don't need

I am in no way part of the marketing dept. (just a low-level guy that gets you
coffee in the morning), but I have to say in defense of what I'm trying to do,
small, lightweight, non-perishable, individually-vacuumed sealed bags of
micro-ground instant coffee that can be made with hot OR cold water, I have
been specifically told by numerous groups over there, would, if not be needed,
definitely be very welcomed.

EVEN IF they never get totally "upstream" the volunteers who are privately
making trips to bring supplies while the government/Red Cross is still in the
"planning" stages are often times running on very, very little sleep.
Something so simple as being able to shake a water bottle with some flavored
instant coffee could the moral (not to mention the driving alertness) of some
very, very exhausted people. And it may find its way even further up the
chain.

As for custom inspections, I don't know it off-hand but there is an
international agreement that Japan is part of where during disasters if you
mark the shipments in a specific way, many pass through customs or, if they
have to be inspected, are designated "priority" and rush-inspected.

As for the money being sent, well, there are "big agencies" like the Red Cross
which raise tons of money and then find themselves in the crosshairs of Bill
O'Reilly types again, and again, and again months and months after any
disaster when it comes to light that not very much of the money raised
actually went to the relief effort people thought they were donating to.

As for the fluidity part, here's an example of the fluidity I've come to learn
of from speaking to counterparts in Japan: not only is the Red Cross advice of
"it's cheaper for them to buy locally" not true since understaffed relief
agencies have to waste time actually doing the buying, but in Japan's case,
they would have to buy the supplies in the VERY EXPENSIVE south to transport
to the cheaper north, the problem being the supplies in the north are either
gone on the east coast or being hoarded in the west.

Oh, and with the recent radiation scare, bottled water is so expensive all of
a sudden that it would actually be cheaper for them to use water sent from the
U.S. for their relief efforts.

So, general truisms may be based from years of experience the Red Cross has in
doing relief, but as you say, the situation is fluid and these truisms don't
seem to be holding so true anymore, at least for Japan.

As far as the "distribution past that point" I've found groups that have done
it, and are ready and willing to do more.

As for the tracking, I just spent and hour speaking with a lady from this
organization who would like to merge efforts:

<http://www.sparkrelief.org>

And you're right, a YouTube clip or two don't convey an accurate picture.

But since our store is near one of these:

<http://www.mitsuwa.com/english/>

I can tell by the still-sullen looks on many people's faces and the never-
ending phone calls that employees make on their breaks and lunches, not to
mention the expression on their faces, that while the situation is "fluid" the
suffering is still very much present.

So, you're right - items donated to charities may wind up in warehouses as
they've done in the past.

But TV tells me that money seems to be no different in many cases.

And I've learned something interesting while doing all this.

People who won't put $10 towards a donation effort will gladly buy $50-100
worth of something or donate much more than that in sweat if they can feel
useful and perceive that their effort is actually going somewhere other than
an account at JP Morgan or what-have-you.

I agree with you about the clogs and bottlenecks. But even though I'm by far
no expert, the "fuzzy picture" that seems to be emerging is that there is not
just the good will impulse but tiny dots of, I don't know, network meshes of
people of goodwill that are trying to connect with each other all over the
place and trying to bypass the big charities altogether.

No warehouse, just people ready to collect and people ready to roll up their
sleeves and distribute. Not make plans to distribute, but actually get in
their own cars on their own time and take packages out with their own hands.

I know it's messy but I've come across so many people who are trying to take
matters into their own hands, both as individuals and groups and if we can't
use all the technology we have these days to do something like this at this
point, then, I don't know, what's the point of life?

I may be naive or something but at the same time something in me just refuses
to believe that in this day and age when some folks can send a flying drone
halfway across the planet to kill somebody, it's an absolute impossibility to
send people diapers, powdered milk and instant coffee, with all the know-how
and internet communication platforms that are around.

I just can't accept this reality.

But I thank you for your thoughtful reply.

------
Mz
Do some googling and make some calls to your closest military installation
concerning "space available" shipping. If they are flying out there anyway and
have space available, they sometimes take charitable donations with them. I
don't know if there is any fee involved or what have you.

~~~
t5
What a good idea that I would not have thought of. Thank you!

~~~
Mz
Some of the storm scenes in _Jurassic Park_ are from a real hurricane that
made landfall in the last day or so before they were scheduled to leave
Hawaii. The site below is the best online resource I could find and it leaves
out a lot of critical details (that I remember from a show on The Weather
Channel). IIRC, one person (probably the person referred to below as Kennedy)
got out of Hawaii via space available with the military and then airlifted
supplies in to give relief to the Hawaiian people, in part so they could get
the cast and crew out who otherwise would have been stranded there for god-
knows-how-long. There were no commercial flights in or out and no permission
to do anything of the sort. The plane was only allowed to land because it
carried relief supplies. Once empty, it was okay to fill it back up and fly
home. There were a number of ways in which the film crew provided relief
locally (to the hotel they stayed in and surrounding areas) while still on the
ground because of the expertise and equipment they had. It's really a very
inspiring story which I think should get more press.

So just keep trying. You don't know what you can do until you try.

Best of luck.

[http://www.lost-
world.com/Lost_World02/Jurassic_Park.Site/Pr...](http://www.lost-
world.com/Lost_World02/Jurassic_Park.Site/Production.html)

 _Kennedy jogged two miles to the airport to explore their options.

"The destruction in the airport was unbelievable," she recalls. "All the
windows were blown out in the terminals, and the buildings were full of palms,
trees, sand and water. Every single helicopter had been tipped on its side."

Thanks to her relentless efforts among airport and military personnel in
Lihue, Kennedy was able to hitch a ride to Honolulu on a Salvation Army plane
and began organizing from a pay phone. Over the next 24 hours, she not only
coordinated the safe return of the company, but also arranged for more than
20,000 pounds of relief supplies to be transported from Honolulu and Los
Angeles into Kauai._

~~~
t5
>> So just keep trying. You don't know what you can do until you try.

Will do. Thank you so much for taking the time to suggest this route and for
your encouragement.

