These kinds of news stories, exposing fraud & corruption, within North American & European NGOs are common, but not reported so often. Reason being that the news media & the general public doesn't want to know about these corruptions, frauds, & scandals.
The general public in North America & Europe desperately wants to feel good by donating cash & kind to NGOs. Other than a few, major ones seemed to be always embroiled in corruption scandals. People like to think that since, I've donated my money, or time, everything is good. I did my share & it's time to move on to some other things. For instance, Syrian refugee crisis is on the public radar right now. Everyone has forgotten about Haitians who are still "enduring sub-standard conditions" in Haiti.
As I blogged previously, people today have ADD (attention deficit disorder). One crisis for a few weeks tops the charts of social media & then it's forgotten until something disastrous happens there again.
American Red Cross is celebrating their successes. The public is still donating in big numbers to American Red Cross. There's no notion of any checks to be done, by the public, on American Red Cross. Such a well-known NGO feeds the public garbage through their marketing campaigns & the public gobbles it up. The public keeps donating without ever asking tough questions to these NGOs. The public thinks that since, it's a NGO, they can do no wrong.
The hiring practices of these NGOs are also deplorable. Like it says in the article that expat project managers are being flown in from US, who are being paid 6-figure salaries (who obviously don't have any compassion towards humanity, since he/she is still earning 6-figure salary with all the standard perks), while nothing substantial was taking place on the ground. Everyone who is hired is through networks, which means that the person hired for a given job is not necessarily the right person.
In the end, who is actually suffering? Not the people who are working in American Red Cross. Not the people who donate to American Red Cross. But the Haitians are suffering who are not only helped in any way, but worse still, they have been completely forgotten by the North American & European public.
Once again, as I always say, corruption exists all over the world. In developing world, it's the main headline in the morning news. In developed world, it's not even reported in the media & while the public focuses on the latest crisis being reported on social media.
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When a devastating earthquake struck the Western hemisphere’s poorest country in 2010, the American Red Cross was one of the organizations at the forefront of the humanitarian effort to rebuild it a year later, launching a multi-million-dollar effort.
The main program – LAMIKA (a Creole acronym for ‘A Better Life in My Neighborhood’) – was to build hundreds of permanent homes to house some 130,000 people living in abject poverty after the quake.
Now, in 2015, the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Campeche is as dilapidated as ever, with hardly any new buildings, trash strewn around, animals walking the streets, & people enduring sub-standard conditions in self-made shacks.
“Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood & residents bail out mud & water,” an introduction to a report says.
An investigation by NPR & ProPublica gained access to “confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, & accounts of a dozen frustrated & disappointed insiders” familiar with how the NGO broke its promises, misspent millions of dollars, & then issued self-congratulatory progress statements.
The ensuing report reveals very different results to the ones outlined in CEO Gail McGovern’s project plan for Haiti, which promised “brand new communities” that would make “donors proud” & “help the people in Haiti.” She claimed her experience had made her more “flexible during emergencies.”
The investigation pointed to a series of systematic blunders & untruths surrounding the Haiti effort, however.
The Red Cross’s internal proposal put the number of houses to be built at 700 by January 2013. In reality, only 6 houses were actually constructed.
“We asked the Red Cross to show us around its projects in Haiti so we could see the results of its work. It declined,” the report reads.
Part of the reason behind the failure is that the Red Cross “didn’t have the know-how” & “they had no development experience,” former employees said.
In some cases, the NGO would give millions to other groups. Poor supervision & lack of proper oversight allowed these subcontractors to rack up inordinate bills for management & overhead costs.
Another issue that could have hindered the Red Cross’s work in Haiti is trouble with the country’s “dysfunctional” land title system.
Other groups, which the report does not name, had similar problems but, according to the data, “ultimately built 9,000 homes compared to the Red Cross’s six.”
Another possible reason for the dismal results, pointed out by current & former employees, was “an overreliance” on expats who could not speak French or Creole. The Red Cross’s statement, however, said that over 90% of people hired were Haitians. That didn’t seem to be reflected in the top positions, however, according to the authors of the report.
According to the report, the NGO displayed an arrogant attitude to national staff – some of the very few people who could speak French & the local Creole. In some cases, the Red Cross actively discouraged their participation. This led to poor communication with the local population &, ultimately, to the failure of the outreach project.
“Going to meetings with the community when you don’t speak the language is not productive,” one Haitian who worked on the project in Campeche said, adding that meetings would be skipped altogether at times.
Some $140,000 was spent on housing, food, & R&R for a foreign project manager, who also enjoyed 4 paid leaves a year. That comes to more than $100,000 more than would have been spent on a local equivalent.
“A lot of money was spent on those people who were not Haitian, who had nothing to do with Haiti. The money was just going back to the US,” one Haitian who coordinated expat housing for the Red Cross confessed.
At the same time, Red Cross officials focused more on programs which would generate good publicity than those providing the most homes, according to testimony from Lee Malany, the project manager of the shelter program.
He recalled a Washington meeting where top officials had no idea what to do with the millions they’d been given for housing projects.
The organization would not provide details on how it spent the almost $500 million that it received, nor give specific details of how its projects were carried out. However, various promotional statements estimated that the initiative had repaired some 4,000 homes, erected temporary shelters for thousands of families, & donated $44 million for food aid & hospital construction.
“The Red Cross’s public reports offer only broad categories about where $488 million in donations has gone,” according to the authors of the report.
5 years since the quake, a report by McGovern says: “Millions of Haitians are safer, healthier, more resilient, & better prepared for future disasters thanks to generous donations to the American Red Cross.”
The organization claimed that it had helped 4.5 million Haitians, but according to reporters “there is reason to doubt” that.
Asked if there was any truth to the Red Cross’s claims, Haiti’s Prime Minister didn’t seem to know how the numbers could add up: “No, no… it’s not possible,” Jean-Max Bellerive said, stressing that the country’s entire population is only about 10 million.
“What the Red Cross told us is that they are coming here to change Campeche. Totally change it,” the report cites Jean Flaubert, the head of a community group set up by the Red Cross, as saying. “Now I do not understand the change that they are talking about. I think the Red Cross is working for themselves.”
The Red Cross had already been embroiled in several scandals following 9/11 & Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, but that did not matter to the many people, organizations & US celebrities who continued to support it.
The Haiti earthquake was touted as “a spectacular fundraising opportunity” within the organization, according to one former official involved with the program.
A great number of high-profile people & organizations donated to the cause, including Michelle Obama, many Hollywood A-listers, & the NFL.
It later turned out that the organization continued to collect funds for emergency relief projects even after it had hit its targets. The extra money was found to have been put toward eradicating the American Red Cross’s own debt, which exceeded $100 million.
The general public in North America & Europe desperately wants to feel good by donating cash & kind to NGOs. Other than a few, major ones seemed to be always embroiled in corruption scandals. People like to think that since, I've donated my money, or time, everything is good. I did my share & it's time to move on to some other things. For instance, Syrian refugee crisis is on the public radar right now. Everyone has forgotten about Haitians who are still "enduring sub-standard conditions" in Haiti.
As I blogged previously, people today have ADD (attention deficit disorder). One crisis for a few weeks tops the charts of social media & then it's forgotten until something disastrous happens there again.
American Red Cross is celebrating their successes. The public is still donating in big numbers to American Red Cross. There's no notion of any checks to be done, by the public, on American Red Cross. Such a well-known NGO feeds the public garbage through their marketing campaigns & the public gobbles it up. The public keeps donating without ever asking tough questions to these NGOs. The public thinks that since, it's a NGO, they can do no wrong.
The hiring practices of these NGOs are also deplorable. Like it says in the article that expat project managers are being flown in from US, who are being paid 6-figure salaries (who obviously don't have any compassion towards humanity, since he/she is still earning 6-figure salary with all the standard perks), while nothing substantial was taking place on the ground. Everyone who is hired is through networks, which means that the person hired for a given job is not necessarily the right person.
In the end, who is actually suffering? Not the people who are working in American Red Cross. Not the people who donate to American Red Cross. But the Haitians are suffering who are not only helped in any way, but worse still, they have been completely forgotten by the North American & European public.
Once again, as I always say, corruption exists all over the world. In developing world, it's the main headline in the morning news. In developed world, it's not even reported in the media & while the public focuses on the latest crisis being reported on social media.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When a devastating earthquake struck the Western hemisphere’s poorest country in 2010, the American Red Cross was one of the organizations at the forefront of the humanitarian effort to rebuild it a year later, launching a multi-million-dollar effort.
The main program – LAMIKA (a Creole acronym for ‘A Better Life in My Neighborhood’) – was to build hundreds of permanent homes to house some 130,000 people living in abject poverty after the quake.
Now, in 2015, the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Campeche is as dilapidated as ever, with hardly any new buildings, trash strewn around, animals walking the streets, & people enduring sub-standard conditions in self-made shacks.
“Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood & residents bail out mud & water,” an introduction to a report says.
An investigation by NPR & ProPublica gained access to “confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, & accounts of a dozen frustrated & disappointed insiders” familiar with how the NGO broke its promises, misspent millions of dollars, & then issued self-congratulatory progress statements.
The ensuing report reveals very different results to the ones outlined in CEO Gail McGovern’s project plan for Haiti, which promised “brand new communities” that would make “donors proud” & “help the people in Haiti.” She claimed her experience had made her more “flexible during emergencies.”
The investigation pointed to a series of systematic blunders & untruths surrounding the Haiti effort, however.
The Red Cross’s internal proposal put the number of houses to be built at 700 by January 2013. In reality, only 6 houses were actually constructed.
“We asked the Red Cross to show us around its projects in Haiti so we could see the results of its work. It declined,” the report reads.
Part of the reason behind the failure is that the Red Cross “didn’t have the know-how” & “they had no development experience,” former employees said.
In some cases, the NGO would give millions to other groups. Poor supervision & lack of proper oversight allowed these subcontractors to rack up inordinate bills for management & overhead costs.
Another issue that could have hindered the Red Cross’s work in Haiti is trouble with the country’s “dysfunctional” land title system.
Other groups, which the report does not name, had similar problems but, according to the data, “ultimately built 9,000 homes compared to the Red Cross’s six.”
Another possible reason for the dismal results, pointed out by current & former employees, was “an overreliance” on expats who could not speak French or Creole. The Red Cross’s statement, however, said that over 90% of people hired were Haitians. That didn’t seem to be reflected in the top positions, however, according to the authors of the report.
According to the report, the NGO displayed an arrogant attitude to national staff – some of the very few people who could speak French & the local Creole. In some cases, the Red Cross actively discouraged their participation. This led to poor communication with the local population &, ultimately, to the failure of the outreach project.
“Going to meetings with the community when you don’t speak the language is not productive,” one Haitian who worked on the project in Campeche said, adding that meetings would be skipped altogether at times.
Some $140,000 was spent on housing, food, & R&R for a foreign project manager, who also enjoyed 4 paid leaves a year. That comes to more than $100,000 more than would have been spent on a local equivalent.
“A lot of money was spent on those people who were not Haitian, who had nothing to do with Haiti. The money was just going back to the US,” one Haitian who coordinated expat housing for the Red Cross confessed.
At the same time, Red Cross officials focused more on programs which would generate good publicity than those providing the most homes, according to testimony from Lee Malany, the project manager of the shelter program.
He recalled a Washington meeting where top officials had no idea what to do with the millions they’d been given for housing projects.
The organization would not provide details on how it spent the almost $500 million that it received, nor give specific details of how its projects were carried out. However, various promotional statements estimated that the initiative had repaired some 4,000 homes, erected temporary shelters for thousands of families, & donated $44 million for food aid & hospital construction.
“The Red Cross’s public reports offer only broad categories about where $488 million in donations has gone,” according to the authors of the report.
5 years since the quake, a report by McGovern says: “Millions of Haitians are safer, healthier, more resilient, & better prepared for future disasters thanks to generous donations to the American Red Cross.”
The organization claimed that it had helped 4.5 million Haitians, but according to reporters “there is reason to doubt” that.
Asked if there was any truth to the Red Cross’s claims, Haiti’s Prime Minister didn’t seem to know how the numbers could add up: “No, no… it’s not possible,” Jean-Max Bellerive said, stressing that the country’s entire population is only about 10 million.
“What the Red Cross told us is that they are coming here to change Campeche. Totally change it,” the report cites Jean Flaubert, the head of a community group set up by the Red Cross, as saying. “Now I do not understand the change that they are talking about. I think the Red Cross is working for themselves.”
The Red Cross had already been embroiled in several scandals following 9/11 & Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, but that did not matter to the many people, organizations & US celebrities who continued to support it.
The Haiti earthquake was touted as “a spectacular fundraising opportunity” within the organization, according to one former official involved with the program.
A great number of high-profile people & organizations donated to the cause, including Michelle Obama, many Hollywood A-listers, & the NFL.
It later turned out that the organization continued to collect funds for emergency relief projects even after it had hit its targets. The extra money was found to have been put toward eradicating the American Red Cross’s own debt, which exceeded $100 million.
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