Ineffective Philanthropy in the Caribbean
The aftermath of the disaster saw an outpour of donation from both the public and private sector, trying to aid the Haitian people. While billions of dollars were raised in donations, much of it was lost due to what some may describe as disastrous philanthropy. One of the biggest examples of disastrous philanthropy recurred at The American Red Cross—a nonprofit organization that is well known for providing emergency disaster relief such as food, blankets, and shelters (Sullivan). The organization went from having a 100 million dollar deficit to raising nearly half a billion dollars for the people of Haiti (Sullivan), a number that has grown to over a billion now (Williams 2). They vowed to provide shelter for the affected families and claimed to have provided homes to 130,000 people (Sullivan), but they had only built 6 permanent homes according to their very own records.
Turns out, the “figure is made up of people who went to a seminar on how to fix their own homes, people who received temporary rental assistance, and thousands of people who received temporary shelters—which (the temporary shelters) start to disintegrate after three to five years” (Sullivan). While the organization may not have had bad intentions regarding the usage of the donations, it is clear that they lacked the proper planning that was necessary during that time in order to properly help the people of Haiti. While there are many predictions regarding the reason behind the misutilization, one of the most prevalent causes was their inability to adapt to Haiti as a country.
The plan for what families would receive in an area named Campeche was to build 700 new homes with living rooms and bathrooms. Instead, the Red Cross changed the plan to do smaller projects such as repairing some homes, walkways, and schools. The organization refuses to disclose the spending on each project and instead keeps referring to the pie chart of what percentage of the budget they allocate to each initiative. The excuse used for only building 6 permanent houses is that land was difficult to acquire, an issue that did not seem to stop other organizations as they built a total of 9,000 homes in Haiti according to Global Shelter Cluster. Besides the inability to acquire land, they were also rather ineffective in consulting with locals regarding their input on rebuilding the nation. Although the Red Cross employed 90% Haitians for their team in Haiti, expatriate workers held the higher positions (Sullivan), which not only increased operational costs but left the major decisions to outsiders completely, which is not ideal.
