Many folks in Haiti have suffered a terrible disaster. And as they dig out of the rubble, bury their dead, tend to the injured and sick, and try to build a future out of what was spared by the earthquake, the readers of this blog should consider our appropriate individual responses.
First: Those folks need our charity. Consider finding a suitable private organization and give, if only a little. Rest assured that charity and liberty go together. And realizing a psychic profit through helping others does add value to your world. (update: As noted by JFP, please use due diligence before selecting a private organization. Many NGOs are simply government by other means.)
Second: Do not count aid coming from the US government as a gift on your part. That money was thieved from your neighbors. And like all ill-gotten gain, most of it will end up in the hands of evil – the very same folks who have impoverished Haiti for decades.
Third: Remember that government aid is not charity. And even when that aid does provide for a short-term need, it comes with a yoke of suffering; a yoke that will last for years. While private organizations usually ask for nothing in return, government aid comes with a hefty burden – it entrenches the existing kleptocracy and enforces the ideology of theft.
Fourth: The recipients of private charity tend to recognize that such aid is the result of sacrifice on part of the donor – it is appreciated. It’s understood that this kind of aid is for the short term only. Government aid, on the other hand, is received with a frown – it is not appreciated, as the recipients expect more and believe the aid will never end, with dependency the result.
Finally: If direct aid is not your thing, work toward liberating Haiti with whatever vigor you can muster. The long-term goal must be the end to the evil state in Haiti, with prosperity arriving soon after the state departs. Any effort that accelerates that change will reduce future suffering.
But until that time, and with many folks suffering, it is charity, through private organizations, that will help those in desperate need.
Note: I was employed by the US Peace Corps in Jamaica and have seen firsthand the results of government and private aid. Private aid is not perfect, but it is not the evil that is government aid.
{ 29 comments }
Jim,
Right you are about the dependency bit… NYT headlines have been screaming about the “anger” of Haitians that aid is not arriving quick enough, or enough enough. Many might find this crass but, nobody is entitled to anything, ever, and that includes basic aid/human compassion following victimization-via-natural disaster.
Very sorry to see you employ the “service” myth in relation to your time spent with the US Peace Corps. Would you say you were “serving” the taxpayers who were robbed to cover your mission? You should know better than to be sloppy with language like that. National “service” is one of the many ways the State convinces the people it is a force for good.
Who but the meanest amongst us can be against “service”?!
Might I suggest the private charity of Shelterbox.
http://www.shelterbox.org
This is a Rotary International project.
Taylor,
Point taken. I’ll change the post. Thanks.
I would suggest to be careful in selection of a charity. Some, such as the American Red Cross, have become rather statist over the years. My choice is the Salvation Army, but I am certain there are many other worthy organizations.
After Katrina Walmart showed up in trucks full of clothing, food, and medical aid. Fema turned them away.
Then while Fema watched people die and suffer while they tried to organize themselves. Never mind the fact they turned away a fully equiped already organized army of help.
Jim,
You have proven yourself to be a most righteous and honest individual! I congratulate you on achieving a level of modesty and self-awareness that so many lack in present times, sadly.
Overall, I enjoyed your post, as I have enjoyed many others in the past.
heh, I was in PC Honduras. Of the 200 volunteers that were there I heard of maybe 2 that actually did something useful. Much of the rest were worse but not necessarily because they didn’t try.
One of our volunteers wrote a book about how he pretty much took a 2 year vacation at the american tax dollar expense during his time in PC Honduras. It’s a terrible organization.
Though I did learn much from it and cherished the time I had with my friends in my site, ultimately my cause there was also fruitless. I just left with personal gain, accomplishments, and sentiments ect…
Service is about the intent of the server, not the ends or the recipient. Charity is the same. So is Trust. These are given by an individual and done so with intent.
Who receives, how they receive, what benefit they gain from the service is a different matter. Why they receive, is of course, the intent of the server.
As long as both sides are happy, then there is a small chance at least that it is good.
I totally agree with this article. I saw a story, with video, of a UN food truck being driven away by a Haitian mob who thought the protein biscuits (whatever those are) might be expired.
Expired? If I were that desperate I’d get food out of the trash if I had to, to survive.
filc: I happened to see ABC’s World News tonight, and in one of the reports, the reporter said something like, “The situation reminds many of Hurricane Katrina, but there is no FEMA here.”
It took me a while to realize he meant that as a bad thing.
Statist corruption and its transnational organisational allies have bred hapless dependence into people over many decades.
I have seen this with my own eyes all across Africa.
Their continued interference will be justified, yet again, as “relief” or “assistance” but will eventually amount to nothing more than the welfare servitude of the people.
While not wanting to influence your choice please consider giving to some organization that will provide health care or a helping hand to orphans, invalids etc. Haiti will be swamped in rations and clothes in the coming months and most of it will rot in the warehouses because there won’t be the means to deliver it where is needed. We’ve seen this after the tsunami which hit South East Asia and this will sadly be a repeat.
Dear All!
My best friend lives in Phuket, and after the Tsunami he was helping as a private to the vitims. Our embassador of Thailand took off to his annual holiday in spite the fact that there was a major disaster and his countrymen are in trouble. My friend paid the air fare for more than 50 people out his own pocket and he was working sleepless for 5 days looking for survivors and family. Our government sent money to the scene and guess only 5% of it actually arrived. The medical supplies got lost on the way. The donations through the radio to rebuild a school never arrived up to date. The only help that arrived was a private company who deals in water treatment who hired a jet with the equipment so they can provide clean water.
That is just to show how government collected and donated fees just did not arrive when and where it was needed.
And now the good news:
I know 2 people who are already on the scene in Haiti.
One of them named Susan Robillard, she is an actress from the US and opened a charity school a year ago in Port au Prince. The school is also damaged but she does not give up in looking for the missing pupils. She organized by now 700 nurses and several volunteers to go.
Please visit her on Facebook, she keeps posting pictures and news:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=172144759707&ref=ts
2nd
Cary Goulston HAITI UPDATE: Just got off the phone with one of the humanitarian groups we established in Haiti. I don’t like to give you bad news but this is the truth of what is going on. Haitans need our help now. 300,000 dead, one million homeless in Port Au Prince. They have no water, no food. Thats the scene. If you can donate, please call me or help in any way, call me. 727 488 7988 carybg@aol.com
Thanks for All to read it and help if you can!
As I’ve seen one Haitian say on video (in French), looking at the collapsed presidential palace: “This is God’s revenge of the Haitian people”…
I appreciate the article. I think it is important to understand the history of the Haitian culture, and that they have faced both external and internal coercion/corruption from their onset. When they hear of so-called “liberators” at the “prison gates,” but the end results are more of the same; it should not be suprising to witness anger/hostility towards the “hands that feed” them, IMHO. Do they hope or do they fear? http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/2_10_8/2_10_8.html
Jim et al.,
After being bombarded with TV commercials asking for donations for Haiti relief over the past few days, I have been researching charitable organizations who specialize in disaster/food aid, and have been disappointed how many of these organizations rely on government funding for a (sometimes large) portion of their funding. In addition to the organizations mentioned earlier in the post (Shelterbox & Salvation Army), does anyone have any suggestions for non-statist organizations who efficiently deliver aid?
In this day and age, it is unfortunate that the discussion surrounding charitable giving is often seasoned with anti-libertarian, anti-capitalist rhetoric. Some people appear to view charitable giving as a means of atoning for the “guilt” of living in a (semi)capitalist country like the US. Some talk about the obligation to “give back” to the community, as if they were medieval serfs.
The modern welfare state has certainly done a very good job of instilling guilt in people in order to render them more pliable and amenable to its depredations. Alas, those who desire to be slaves will always find a willing master.
I agree with just about everything in this thread….
This may be the time to give some kudos to a site called http://www.charitynavigator.com here. This information may be well-known to some readers here, but I can’t express enough how beneficial it has been to me in my research.
Jeff
The Susan Robillard mentioned in the same posting above is another Scientology recruiter. Do NOT give your money to Scientology cult recruiters. It will NOT be used to help anyone in Haiti.
I know many here may not be religious but let me recomment the Southern Baptist Haitian Relief effort whether you are religious or not.
Southern Baptists take funds from their cooperative giving from member churches to fund the overhead for relief programs and they have the infrastructure in place to get the relief to the people. This means that 100% of any money you give designated to the Southern Baptist Haitian Relief will go to relief only, not into someone’s pocket, not to provide Bibles, or literature, or religious indoctrination, but medical care, hot meals, water, clothing, rebuilding water systems, and other critical human needs. And after providing such relief for over 100 years they know the most critical needs.
There may be other programs like this out there, but I know this one and there is none better.
Note: I was employed by the US Peace Corps in Jamaica and have seen firsthand the results of government and private aid. Private aid is not perfect, but it is not the evil that is government aid.
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Could you write an article expanding on that statement? I have heard of the Peace Corps, as everyone has, but I don’t really know that much about it. As a Christian, it seemed a little too secular for me to want to participate, though the (secular) people who speak of it usually surround it with a halo. Does your comment refer to the Peace Corps as government aid and therefore bad, or are you referring to other government aid, or perhaps both? (If it is actually private aid, I suppose my comment will sound very ignorant, which it is.)
Channah,
The intentions are good but results are mixed at best. My site for example was heavily Dependant on free volunteer labor. No one ever established a system of sustainability for them.
I could go on but the focus is never about installing a sustainable system to benefit your site. Now some volunteers did manage to get something good installed, others made a real valid effort but the locals were not interested. PeaceCorps forgets that the locals need to be willing in order for anything to work. It’s just like consumer demand right, if you build something no one wants well….
I was in a site where the locals were not really interested in any criticism I had on how to improve things. And since I certainly wasn’t going to be free labor for the next two years I did something different. If I wanted a mundane 9-5 job I could have stayed in the states. Any how one could write a book about everything. It’s not all bad though..
Dick Fox,
I concur! I have seen this group in action first hand, and I have a neighbor who has been working with the Southern Baptist disaster relief for many years. They are quite impressive; well organized, efficient and very effective.
Jim, good observation on what I think the root of the problem is:
Imo, the most effective charity anyone could give right now would be to press a button that would abolish their State.
NGO’s (failed groups of individuals for whom otherwise would be unemployed or unemployable in their homelands), charity organizations (secular & non-secular) and non-profit humanitarian groups are all stealing from the pot of hope and prosperity for too long of Haitians. They benefited simply by paying themselves first then help the needy with whatever if any resources are left.
Despite decades of so called humanitarian efforts perpetrated by the French, the English and the American, no progress has been made for the state that freed itself from the hands of colonization when every other states in its surrounding seas, enslaved. It was once the wealthiest state in the Western Hemisphere.
Haitians need for all these helpers to leave the land of Toussaint L’Overture so they may pull themselves up like their ancestors were able to do in 1804. Let’s not judge how and how long they will do this. For who are you to judge? Is it the corrupted hands from around the world scolding Haitians that seek avenues to survive humanly and collectively.
The internal corruptions among Haitians are to be addressed by Haitians and only Haitians. What to do can not be forecast. Alexander Hamilton said, “A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.” The will to survive exist within all.
prettyskin wrote:
“Haitians need for all these helpers to leave the land of Toussaint L’Overture so they may pull themselves up like their ancestors were able to do in 1804.”
Very true. The problem seems to be that years of international “aid” have produced the same thing internationally that welfare produces domestically; an entitlement mentality. It seems that many Haitians believe that we are obliged to give them whatever they want or need. They don’t seem to understand that “charity” is the giving of something when there is no obligation to do so. So US welfare dollars have destroyed the best hope many Haitians as well as that of many black Americans; a spirit of self-responsibility and free enterprise.
I’m sorry, but short of engaging in criminal activities (like those individuals who ran their own boat rescues in the aftermath of Katrina) I see no way any private charity can escape becoming an agent of the government, as they will not let you participate unless you go through them. Hell, I tried to provide free transportation to people holed up in the Astrodome, but the RC would not let me approach them, nor would they tell them about me. I was told that if I wanted to help, then I had to join the RC, and no, I still couldn’t transport anyone. All I could do was to help keep them in their cages, which was the problem I was trying to alleviate.
The only way private aid can work is through existing private community connections/networks where someone here knows someone there and can bypass the gate-keepers. Or in other words, a trust connection has to exist.
Problem is, as we know all too well, to the government, these networks are all unwanted competition, and have thus been destroyed or otherwise neutered. The keyword they use is ‘liability.’ For some reason, unless you do things their way, they may be liable. They never could explain though, how their methods managed to be liability free. To me, it had something to do coercion and violence, but of course, they never made this connection to their organized crime roots.
The only functional private network I saw after Katrina was the churches. Every town had the same story, no help from FEMA/Red Cross, but thank God for the church volunteers, without them we’d be dead!
If I were to come to LvMI wondering how to help the people of Haiti, I would first look for someone here who knows someone there in order to foster trust, as well as identify specific human needs we can help meet.
Otherwise, we can only rely on blind luck to keep us from further enslaving those who are suffering. Given my views on the anti-human nature of institutions, I cannot even begin to trust those within them, as they are mostly wishful thinkers who equate intent with results, being “doers” with no need for introspection of their actions.
That said, does anyone here know anyone trustworthy in Haiti who upholds the ideals of human liberty? (i.e. not someone like Wyclef, who you might think is trustworthy, but gets paid from his own aid org)
I would love to donate, but do not feel true aid is even possible given the corrupt nature of the golems we know as charitable institutions.
Laronda Barajos
i was starting to assume i may well be the sole woman / man which thought about this, at the least at this point i discover i’m not mad
i’ll make it a point to pay a visit to a couple of various other posts after i get my morning caffeine in me, take care 
Good day, pleased i ran across your blog. It taught me to be to learn this issue somewhat better.
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