Why are there so many natural disasters lately?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

This is an updated and edited post of a previous post

The Haiti earthquake occurred just weeks after the five year anniversary of the Southeast Asia tsunami. Between these two catastrophic events were other disasters including Hurricane Katrina,…

Will we repeat the mistakes of the last disaster?

Monday, February 8th, 2010

This is an updated and edited version of a previous post

Reading ALNAP’s Responding to earthquakes 2008: learning from earthquake relief and recovery operations reminded me of a common problem in the aid world – conducting evaluations and…

Don’t earmark your donation

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Although it’s common advice for donors, earmarking or restricting charitable donations is not a good idea. Instead of ensuring that your money is well spent, it can actually prevent the organization from using your donation where it can…

Interesting articles, posts, and guidelines from late Jan and early Feb 2010

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Here is a round up of the articles and posts written both about the recovery efforts in Haiti as well as other development issues that I found interesting from this past week. There are some guidelines included as…

Placing children in orphanages or up for adoption can be a lucrative trade

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

The case of the New Life Children’s Refuge attempting to sneak children, many of whom were not orphans, into the Dominican Republic to be cared for in an orphanage and potentially put up for foreign adoption is making headlines. From…

Disaster Tourism and Haiti

Monday, February 1st, 2010

This is an edited and updated repost of a June 2009 post.

As director of D-TRAC I was often asked to orient heads of aid organizations and donors on the tsunami recovery efforts. As part of this there…