Help surely is needed. But your shoes, old clothes, expired drugs, canned food, and God-knows-what else is not going to help. As Jessica Alexander, an experienced aid worker found, the impulse to give things to disaster survivors (as Craig Fugate calls them--not "victims") travels like wildfire. Yet, as she knows from her own experience, "well-meaning people repeatedly get it wrong." Indeed, the term "well meaning" is de rigeur in all stories about the entirely human desire to help suffering people.
While the impulse to help is strong, so, apparently, is the impulse to clean out closets, yielding donations of old food, old medicine, old shoes, and old food that aid organizations have to sort, repackage, and...sometimes distribute. But often they just warehouse these things. People with better things to do--distributing appropriate aid supplies--are left sorting through what is usually junk.
Of course, the impulse is not always bad--the movement to send teddy bears to Newtown after the Sandy Hook shootings was motivated by the best qualities of compassion and concern. But Newtown was overwhelmed by both the shootings, and the logistical challenges of managing all the teddy bears.
Indeed, as noted in what may be one of the only accurate and useful listicles in the history of the medium, Dave Roos at howstuffworks.com provides an excellent list of the "10 worst things to donate after a disaster:
- used clothing
- shoes
- blankets
- teddy bears
- medicine [particularly half-used over-the-counter stuff that's beyond its expiration date]
- pet supplies
- mixed items [apparently, some people just box up some stuff and "overwhelm" communities with "disorganized generosity"].
- canned food and bottled water
- your unsolicited help [which can lead to what some call a "second disaster"]
- money to the wrong people [that is, fraudsters who take advantage of people's generosity]
How should we help the survivors of Haiyan? Through cash donations to reputable charitable organizations, such as those listed in The Lede blog in the New York Times. As the Times notes, charities should be checked out carefully, particularly ones that send out appeals--Charity Navigator is one of the most often cited sources of information about charity performance.
Cash is everything that material donations are not: cash is lightweight, easily transported (by electronic transfers), it can be put to use on the immediate needs of the moment, and it can be used by real experts in disaster relief. It won't cause disaster survivors to pick through worn clothing or four-inch high heeled shoes, and won't humiliate people who are confronted with food, clothing, and other items that are culturally or climatically inappropriate--who needs a winter coat in a tropical region?
