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3 lessons learned from hurricane relief to Cuba

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After discussing concerns I have about the way the relief effort for Haiti has been handled, I wanted to mention some things that I observed after Cuba was hit by 4 hurricanes in 2008:

(1) We need to stay home. Well, maybe not everybody. But if you can’t go and offer a needed skill, you’re a hindrance, not a help. One man I know hurried to get down to Havana soon after the hurricanes went through. It was a time of terrible food shortages on the island. I’m sure that his presence encouraged some, but he was also using up precious resources that were needed by others. We feel a desperate need to do something, yet there are times when our attempts at helping only hurt.

(2) We need to trust the locals. People say, “Well, we need to go and make sure the money is spent right.” Whether we recognize it or not, there is a bit of ethnocentrism in that, a bit of the idea that “those folks just won’t know how to handle things.” One preacher from Panama told me about a building that a church from the States had built. They insisted on using an architect from the U.S., which increased the costs greatly because he wasn’t familiar with local building codes, local materials, nor local labor practices. We need to recognize that in most instances they will know better what they need than we will.

(3) Centralization and cooperation are powerful tools. Due to the nature of Cuban-U.S. relations, people from the States couldn’t go running down there. With the complicated processes involved in getting money to Cuba, it was only natural that the money sent by churches was pooled and overseen by a committee of Cuban church members. Rather than being distributed by agencies competing with one another for funds, the relief items were distributed through one central group.

The situation in Cuba is unique, however the lessons we can learn from what happened there can help us respond to other disasters, especially in the Caribbean.

My 3 big concerns about helping Haiti (and other disaster areas)

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Am I the only one who gets a little uncomfortable when a certain type of relief becomes popular? It’s not easy to talk about, because it can make you sound so insensitive. And I’ll confess to having waited a few weeks so as not to distract from the task at hand. But now I want to point out three main concerns I’ve had over the last few weeks, not just about Haiti, but about knee-jerk emergency relief in general.

  1. Everybody and their dog starts raising money. The relief bandwagon gets pretty crowded. Any agency that is remotely connected to relief or the area in question begins collecting funds. Questions about distribution structure, contacts on the ground, etc. get overlooked. We want to help and are willing to give to anyone who says they are going to help.
  2. Inefficiency is permitted in the name of haste. Planning falls by the wayside. We want something done NOW. There is a need for quick response, but does that excuse spending twice as much to get the same thing done?
  3. Good projects lose funding as money is funneled into the emergency bottleneck. Some of these projects are feeding people who will be in dire straits without the aid being provided. They are well-organized, efficient projects, but because they aren’t the latest big thing, they just aren’t as interesting.

Places like Haiti need our help. They need it quickly. But we need to think carefully about the best ways to make our donations do the most good.