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When I was in India , I met a man on a train to Calcutta who worked for a charity that only helped girls aged 4 to 11. Any younger and they couldn’t survive without a family, and any older and it was too expensive to save them. I wanted to help. Even if I gave all my money away, there’s still more demand than supply. It’s almost paralyzing when you start to look at the options and judge who needs your help most, but I have to start somewhere. I have to chose where to give now. I decided I wanted to give to the Pakistan earthquake victims. The earthquake was an aberration from the norm, not a systemic problem and they have a chance of getting back to self sufficiency. The girls in Calcutta will always be there, and they do need my help, but if the Pakistanis can get help now, they won’t need it in the future. And I was up in the Himalayas last January, so I feel like I have a connection to them: I saw what their lives were like and I was freezing cold even in the hotel. How much is a life worth? One of the first questions is how much should I give. It was supposed to be three thousand dollars. That’s the money I earned building the corporate website for a company on the periphery of the US military industrial complex a couple of years ago. I took the money, but swore I would donate it to a good cause. Then I spent the money traveling around the world for a year and moving back to the US . But my savings are building up again, and I can start giving back what I owe from the borrowed blood money. I can’t do the whole three grand right now, so how much? A real comparison came earlier this week when my cat got sick and we had to take her to the emergency pet clinic. Six hundred and fifty dollars later we discover she needs to drink more water, and that we should have gone direct to the awesome Companion Pet Clinic in St. Johns rather than the grossly overpriced Dove Lewis in Northwest. We paid that money for a cat. Surely I can match it for some humans. Once the major philosophical issues were out of the way, it was time for practicality. How do I get the money to the people who need it? Sending it directly to a Pakistani charity was the most tempting, but also the least likely to have positive results. I wanted to give to an Islamic charity to show my support for the good that those charities can do and not give in to the stereotype that they’re all fronts for terror cells. You can give direct to President Musharraf through the United Bank of Islamabad, or read the “Donar” Information page (including a list of all the agencies at work in Pakistan). The Pakistan Red Crescent Society has a super-slick website and the Kashmir International Relief Fund looks like it offers genuine help – they certainly don’t waste money on the web design, something I actuallky take as a good sign that donations are being well spend on actual services . The more I looked at the Pakistani sites though, the more I realized I knew nothing about them. It’s too easy to set up a fake charity website whether it’s in Islamabad or Los Angeles , for terror or a nice car, and I’d never know the difference. Unless I could get a recommendation from someone whom I trusted and had first hand knowledge, I had to look closer to home. The problem with giving to biggies like World Vision and the Red Cross is a lot of charities are cashing in on the earthquake, essentially using the disaster as a marketing outreach effort for their own existent charitable efforts. These are the guys who do a lot of marketing – and a lot of good – already. WorldVision has bought every GoogleAd word combination there is for “ Pakistan ”, “earthquake” and “donate”. But look at the small print and you see where at least some of the money goes: “…Your gift will also enable World Vision to stay in disaster-affected areas for the long haul, rebuilding communities and lives.” Like the Islamic charities based out of Islamabad , I can’t trust them to spend the money in the right way. I want my donation to go to Pakistan’s earthquake victims for food and shelter and a plan to get them back to self sufficiency on their own terms, not supporting the Christians who despite their protestations (if you’ll pardon the pun) must direct some of their money to supporting their missionary agenda. Like the Islamic charities, I have no real reason to think they would mis-spend my money, and I’m glad they are raising money for the poor, but I have to look elsewhere. A real surprise in my research was the United Nations. After drilling down through their various Secretariats, I found the Pakistan earthquake section, only to be directed off-site to reliefweb, which only after careful reading turns out to be attached to the UN. It was an informative site, but I couldn’t find a place to give money direct to the UN effort. Eventually, I found this page. I think it’s legitimate, but even so it’s not reassuring that this is all the info they have on donating: Please deposit your donations into Mercy and signs from above In the end, the answer was on my own doorstep. Portland ’s own Mercy Corps fits nearly all of my requirements. They’re included on all the lists of agencies acting in the area, they have high ratings from external watchdogs (Charity Watch, Charity Navigator), a super low administrative overhead (8%, compared with 15-23% for the United Way), and a limited scope of operations, which means they’re not trying to solve all the world’s problems. They’ve been in Pakistan for years already, but they’ve stepped up their presence to repond to the distaster. There are now six mobile medical camps on the ground treating 700 patients a day. They’ve delivered 18 metric tons of good and are setting up sanitary latrines and schools in the most impacted villages. Most important I trust them. Based on what, I’m not sure. A few positive OPB stories, 30 minutes of research on the internet. But I can go down to the office to give them my money. 3015 SW First Ave . So I did. It’s actually the oddest coincidence I’ve had in a long time. I’d just finished the first draft of this story and was driving to work. I got trapped in the right hand turn lane by traffic, so had to follow my lane into deepest darkest SW. Twisting and turning trying to get back to downtown, I ended up where? 3015 SW First Ave . I’ve never been in the neighborhood before, and now there I was directly outside Mercy Corps. So I parked, walked inside and asked to talk to someone about Pakistan . Most of the Pakistan team are actually over there, but program director John Stephens is holding down the fort over here and he spoke with me for half an hour. I liked what he had to say. Mercy Corps is specifically secular. There are Christians who work there, and they coordinate with many religious agencies, but it’s practical sustainable aid they provide, not the promise of everlasting salvation. Mercy Corps is able to keep costs down because they have very few ex-pats (Westerners) working in the field. Of the 130 staff in Pakistan , 123 are local, which means 1) costs are drastically contained, and 2) the skill and experience borne from the work stay in country so it can continue to benefit the community. Salaries stay in the community too, injecting cash into the economy, but in a positive way, through honest work, not a hand-out. This Cash for Work policy is driving their Pakistan relief efforts. There are literally not enough tents in the world to shelter all those who need it, so Mercy Corps is hiring local men to salvage materials from the rubble and build accommodation for everyone else. That’s it and I hope this helps you if you want to help some people who could really do with your help. |
