How to Help Haiti

American Red Cross
The American Red Cross' primary focus during the initial response of an emergency is feeding, sheltering and supplying any other basic needs. To donate: Go to RedCross.org, hit donate now button at top and then International Response Fund. You also can text "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 to the International Response Fund. The money will go directly to relief efforts in Haiti. Or call 1-800-Red-Cross.

Care 
This humanitarian organization's main focus is to fight global poverty, specifically by empowering marginalized women and girls. To donate to the Haiti relief fund effort, go to Care.org or call 1-800-521-CARE. Money will go toward food, water and sanitation, shelter and emergency health response.

Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity provides affordable, safe shelter for low-income families and people in need. Money donated for Haiti relief efforts will go toward recovery and rebuilding. To donate, go to habitat.org or call 1-800-Habitat.

Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)
The humanitarian organization delivers medical care to people caught in crisis. Donations to its Haiti relief efforts will go toward repairing the obstetrics and trauma hospitals in Haiti that were damaged in the earthquake. They also will go to transporting an additional 70 doctors and medical supplies to the island in an effort to set up makeshift emergency medical response centers. To donate, go to doctorswithoutborders.org or call 1-888-392-0392. 

The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army's mission is to provide food, shelter, clothing and spiritual comfort during disasters. To donate money, go to salvationarmyusa.org or call 1-800-SAL-ARMY. Make sure you designate the donation for "Haiti Earthquake." Money will go to the Salvation Army in Haiti, which will determine the country's immediate needs, including water, food, medicine and transportation.

U.S. Fund for UNICEF
The national committee for UNICEF is responsible for the organization's fundraising. UNICEF uses the money for health care, clean water, nutrition, education and emergency relief. To donate, go to Unicefusa.org or 1-800-4-UNICEF.

Jan 13, 2010
Advice for Donors to Haiti
by Laura Starita, PhilanthropyAction.com
In light of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, we thought it would be useful to republish some advice for donors to disaster relief efforts that we’ve culled from lessons learned after the Boxing Day Tsunami, Katrina, the Chinese earthquake and other other recent natural disasters. These thoughts are most specifically drawn from studies conducted by the Fritz Institute and the World Bank.


1) The response in the first 48-72 hours after a catastrophic event is overwhelmingly local. Local organizations, even local people with no official organizational affiliation, are the ones usually reaching out to search for their neighbors and friends and provide whatever relief is available. They also have the knowledge of the terrain, the local dynamics and where the most vulnerable reside. Thus, it is the local groups that need immediate support in terms of supplies, money, etc. Where international organizations with a relief capability play a role is where they already have a local presence and are able to dispatch their personnel quickly and efficiently to help locals. This reality may make international organizations not already in the region feel helpless, but it should instead be viewed as an invaluable opportunity to assess the situation and its needs and plan for what follow-up and recovery support can be provided.


2) Survivors are consistently concerned about friends and loved ones, often more so than they are with their own health and safety. Relief efforts need to acknowledge this concern while dealing with the immediate requirements of the surviving victims—studies consistently report that survivors whose concerns over the missing were acknowledged and addressed had a more positive recovery outlook months later than those whose concerns were dismissed. A more positive outlook was also noted in people who received aid of any kind—water, shelter, food, clothing, etc.—in the first two days after the event.


3) Donations of in-kind clothing and food often are less useful than monetary donations given to organizations who can then assess need. The reason is that that clothing is often climatically or culturally inappropriate; by wearing them victims are reminded of their displacement and humiliation. Likewise, food donations that arrive after the immediate days or weeks, when local food markets may be nominally back in order, can cause the same distortions as in-kind food aid, which depress prices at functioning local food markets and breed shame in the recipients.


4) Donors need to keep a long term view of the recovery period. The vast majority of funds are given in the immediate aftermath of a disaster for relief efforts, often more money than is needed for that task. Most famously, a few weeks after the Asian tsunami, Doctors without Borders stopped accepting donations because they had received more than they could use in the relief effort. One of the most consistent findings from the Hurricane Katrina and Asian tsunami studies, however, is that nine months after those events the majority of the victims were still living in temporary housing and had not yet regained their previous levels of income generation. This suggests that large donors should prioritize the longer term effort of building permanent homes and creating income-generating opportunities over the immediate safety and public health challenges have been met.


5) Recovery needs to be managed with an eye toward equity and the environment. Land rights, for example, need to be established quickly so that the displaced and worst affected don’t lose the rights to their land to those less affected. Donations and recovery efforts must also be sensitive to the economic and environmental balances in the region. For example, after the Asian tsunami, coastal regions in India received donations of fishing boats so their fishers could return to earning income. The problem was more boats were donated than had been operating before the disaster, thus putting additional pressure on fisheries and decreasing incomes for everyone on the water.


As the disaster relief effort ramps up donors considering where their money can do the most should consider the above noted lessons and evaluate aid agencies based on how aware they are of the pasts’ failures and how willing they are to improve on their outcomes.