From MSNBC.com, by JoNel Aleccia: "More than a week after a magnitude-7 earthquake devastated the country, disaster organizers say they’re seeing the first signs of a problem that can hinder even the most ambitious recovery efforts: good intentions gone wrong.
From volunteer medical teams who show up uninvited, to stateside donors who ship boxes of unusable household goods, misdirected compassion can actually tax scarce resources, costing time, money, energy — and lives, experts say."
Those best suited to help are probably already there, experts said. They’re trained crews who not only have experience working in disasters, but also in developing nations, Kirsch said. The best teams also have a command of Haitian Creole and French, if possible.
When teams arrive without those skills and without their own supplies, they drain resources that could better be used for actual victims, said Dr. Kristi L. Koenig, an emergency physician at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in disaster response.
“Unless you’re part of a team before the disaster happens with a formal mission, you’re going to be part of the problem,” she said.
Even worse, certain volunteers have required emergency intervention themselves, Kirsch noted.
A different but equally pressing problem is the flood of ill-advised donations that aid agencies already are facing, organizers.
“I would strongly recommend that no donation drives be conducted unless there’s an existing organization on the ground, in Haiti, that has asked for the help,” Rothe-Smith, executive director of the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, a coalition of agencies, said. “It does pile up very quickly.” Donations of old clothes, canned goods, water and outdated prescriptions are accumulating. While such items sound useful, they’re actually expensive to sort, to transport and to distribute, she said. Cast-off drugs can be dangerous.
Oftentimes, the household items donated are simply not useful to the disaster victims they’re intended to help.
“I guarantee you someone is going to send a winter coat or high-heeled shoes,” Brooks said.
In fact, after the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, aid organizers in Sri Lanka were forced to deal with donations of stiletto shoes, expired cans of salmon, evening gowns and even thong panties, according to news reports. In Florida, a truckload of mink coats showed up during the 2004 hurricane season, Rothe-Smith said, a likely tax write-off for a retailer having trouble pushing furs.
The compassion behind some donations is understandable — and laudable, she added. People see dire images on television or in news reports and they want to help. “It seems to make logical sense to go through your own cupboard and gather those items,” Rothe-Smith said.
The reality, however, is that inappropriate donations actually do more harm than good. “If you buy a can of peas and it costs 59 cents, it’ll cost about $80 to get it where it needs to go,” Rothe-Smith said.
Many agencies try to motivate donors with the mathematics of the situation. Jeff Nene, a spokesman for Convoy of Hope, a Springfield, Mo., agency that feeds 11,000 children a day in Haiti, urges cash donations that allow his group to buy in bulk from large suppliers and retailers.
“When people give $1, it translates into $7 in the field,” he said. “If they spend $5 for bottled water, that’s nice and it makes them feel good, but probably it costs us more than $5 to send it. If they give us $5, we can get $35 worth of water.”
That’s a sentiment echoed by virtually every aid agency. “I would really say at this point, honestly, right now, money is the best thing to give,” Rothe-Smith said.
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