February 12, 2010 | Read Time: 6 minutes
The statistics and the images of suffering from Haiti speak for themselves: 200,000 people dead, 500,000 in need of water, 1.1 million in need of shelter, and 2 million in need of food, according to statistics released early this month from the United States Agency for International Development and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Donors have responded, providing more than $709-million, The Chronicle estimates, to support the many immediate needs of Haiti’s people.
Unfortunately, that sum is just a fraction of what will be needed to deal with Haiti’s full range of recovery and reconstruction needs.
Now, as the news media’s attention to the crisis begins to fade, donors face a critical question: How can they best contribute limited resources for the desperately needed longer-term recovery efforts?
For practical purposes, answering that question will often come down to evaluating the recovery plans that organizations in Haiti will produce in the coming weeks and months. As donors begin to review those plans, they can help ensure that their gifts make the biggest possible difference by heeding the following five principles:
Assess the organization that devised the plan. Determine how long the group has worked in Haiti and assess its understanding of the country, including its culture and needs. Thousands of relief and development organizations have operated in Haiti for years, and supporting those that have a long history there is sound business.
Also, make sure that the organization has effective leadership and financial controls at the country level in Haiti, not just at the international headquarters. Evidence of financial controls includes ombudsman programs, relationships with watchdog organizations, and financial accountability mechanisms.
Effective leadership generally means that full-time, permanent staff members with experience in Haiti are leading the recovery effort. And search for organizations that possess the niche expertise that can fill a specific need, such as orthopedic medicine (because so many Haitians have suffered severe fractures and amputations from the earthquake). Advocacy, mental-health support, and the protection for vulnerable people from abuse are also much needed but lack financial support. In these cases, donors and grant makers may need to look to organizations without deep experience in Haiti.
If so, they should look closely at how those charities plan to deliver their services.
Look for a clear statement of purpose and a sense of history. The recovery plan should articulate specific problems confronting Haiti’s people and should clearly describe how the organization’s approach deals with those problems through actions that lead to measurable results. It should also display a strong understanding of who else is working on the recovery effort, to avoid duplication of others’ work.
Finally, the plan should reflect lessons learned from previous disasters. For instance, the plan could draw on expertise gained from the Pakistan earthquake of 2005, when relief and recovery organizations were called upon to provide suitable shelter options for survivors weathering severe elements. Pakistan is far from Haiti, but lessons nonprofit organizations learned there are relevant as relief efforts in Port-au-Prince seek to provide shelter to significant portions of the population in an environmentally, culturally, and socially appropriate manner.
Consider your own giving strategy. Recovery needs in Haiti will span all types of causes that donors support, such as the environment, agriculture, shelter, water and sanitation, education, and health care. Consider how those needs relate to your giving strategies and expertise. For example, when responding to the typhoons that struck the Asia-Pacific region in 2009, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation marshaled its expertise in water, sanitation, and hygiene as it financed recovery efforts along those lines. No matter the size of your donation or your foundation’s staff, you can make the most of your resources by tapping in-house expertise.
When supporting international organizations, look for evidence of local partnerships. Experience with previous disasters shows that international organizations are more effective at rebuilding community assets when they operate in close partnership with local groups. Working with local organizations makes it easier to carry out programs, and rebuilding local enterprises following a disaster is good business.
Save the Children, an international organization with decades of experience in Haiti, has longstanding relationships with two Haitian organizations, the Faculté des Sciences Infirmières de l’Université Episcopale d’Haïti in Léogâne (Faculty of Nursing Science of the Episcopal University of Haiti) and the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti. After the earthquake, these organizations helped Save the Children distribute relief goods throughout neighborhoods ravaged by the disaster. The trust and connections the organizations had built before the catastrophe were critical to accelerating relief operations.
What constitutes a vibrant partnership? Look for groups that share human and financial resources as well as program expertise to benefit affected people by maximizing the talents of both international organizations and those that work locally.
Expect the plan to “build Haiti better.” Even before the earthquake struck, Haiti was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The best recovery plans will seek to make Haiti stronger than it was before the earthquake. They should demonstrate at least two elements. First, programs and activities should link relief programs to longer-term recovery and development work. Second, recovery efforts should take disaster preparedness into account.
Mercy Corps executed well on this first principle after the 2004 tsunamis in southern Asia. With an emphasis on economic recovery and development, Mercy Corps initially operated cash-for-work programs designed to remove debris. Those programs shifted over time to those that provided sustainable livelihood opportunities to Acehnese families, including cash grants and microfinance. Similar programs could help Haitians improve and strengthen their communities as they rebuild.
As for disaster preparedness: Sadly, this was not the first natural disaster to hit Haiti, and it won’t be the last. Look for activities that will help reduce damage from future disasters, including plans that account for earthquake-resistant buildings, better medical infrastructure, donor-coordination mechanisms, and agricultural planning. In Bangladesh, residents and charities have responded to disastrous cyclical floods by undertaking activities to reduce risks and prepare for disasters in ways that sharply reduce the number of lives lost. Haiti now needs similar thinking.
While international relief and recovery organizations with headquarters in the United States will probably continue to garner the bulk of Americans’ private donations, we should also stress the value of directly supporting organizations based in Haiti. Not only are those organizations adept at navigating local logistics and understanding the local context for their operations but they also deliver essential programs and services to earthquake survivors.
Perhaps most important, donors should plan now for a sustained commitment to the disaster-response effort. As the United Nations special envoy for tsunami recovery, former President Bill Clinton, has noted, “Progress in rebuilding the physical, social, and human capital of shattered communities is measured in years, not months.”
Haiti’s challenges demand that donors do all they can to make sure their contributions make a difference in building a brighter future for Haiti.
Eric Kessler is a principal and Regine Webster is senior associate for disaster philanthropy at Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors, in Washington.
