How to evaluate volunteer opportunities in Haiti
Posted on January 28, 2010 at 1:48 pm
There are now a proliferation of organizations seeking volunteers to help with the Haiti rebuilding efforts. Information on 14 of these organizations can be found here. After being contacted by two people wanting to know if these projects were credible, I’ve taken some time to review the entire list. I found that at least half of the programs are professionally questionable. Many of the projects are not in the best interest of the aid recipient but instead are designed to bring money into the organization. Potential volunteers should always scrutinize any position before volunteering.
Working with children Does the organization conduct a background check on every single volunteer? Children after disasters are extremely vulnerable, would you want your child cared for by any random stranger that paid to join a volunteer program? Why is the organization bringing in foreign volunteers for child care? This is something thousands of Haitians would be well qualified to do and their families would benefit greatly from the income. For the price of a single volunteer airplane ticket a local person could be employed full-time for many months. Is it appropriate for foreign volunteers to work with children who have just gone through a trauma? Volunteers likely do not speak the local language or understand the local culture. This could potentially place the children in a foreign environment just when they need a familiar environment. If volunteers come and go the program could cause additional stress and trauma for the children as they lose contact with volunteers they have become attached to.
Construction There are many of the same issues regarding volunteers helping with construction as there are surrounding volunteers helping with child care. Why would an organization fly in unskilled volunteers to build things when there are thousands of unskilled and skilled local people that desperately need money to care for their family and rebuild their lives. By working for free volunteers undercut the local labor market. For the cost of a round trip plane ticket a local construction worker could be paid months worth of work.
Counseling Counseling is often not successful if undertaken by outsiders. An organization working in Thailand after the tsunami encountered difficulties caused simply by the cultural and religious differences between the Thai counselors from Bangkok and the rural Thais they were trying to help. It would be similar to sending people from rural Utah to counsel people in New York City. If the counselor is a foreigner it is even more difficult. Do the volunteers speak French or Creole? Do they have experience in trauma counseling? Are they prepared to volunteer for at least half a year to build the relationships and trust that they’ll need to have with their patients? I question any organization that brings in foreign volunteers for counseling. It would be far better for that organization to invest in training community members on how to support each other and what warning signs to look for.
Distributing goods Again, why fly in foreign volunteers to do something that local people could be hired to do?
Teaching What exactly will the volunteers teach if they don’t speak the local language? If the volunteers teach English there needs to be a critical look at how much this will actually benefit the child. Does the child need to be able to speak English in their daily lives? Once the volunteers leave how often will the students have an opportunity or need to interact with English speakers? Do the lessons follow a clear curriculum with each lesson building on the last or is it whatever random game or song the volunteer wants to teach? Is the program designed to meet the needs of Haitians or the needs of volunteers?
Needs assessments A good needs assessment is critical to for a well designed project, while a bad needs assessment generally leads to questionable or failed projects. To do a needs assessments properly requires the ability to talk with government offices, coordinate with other aid organizations, meet with area leaders and gather information from disaster survivors. It also requires an understanding of industry best practices both for conducting a needs assessment and in project planning. Needs assessment should be a top priority for each organization, not something relegated to random volunteers.
Business development How well do the volunteers understand the marketplace in developing countries? Will the assistance they provide be based on the realities of Haiti or will it be based on the realities of wherever the volunteer is from? Will volunteer advice cause aid recipients to loose money through investing in failed livelihoods projects? I’ve seen this happen far too often to take this lightly.
Medical Unless the volunteer has prior medical training and is closely supervised by an experienced medical team volunteers should not be allowed to provide medical assistance.
Volunteer opportunities currently advertised Here are just a few examples of volunteer opportunities currently being advertised. I’ve shortened them from the original post and marked in red any activity where I question the validity of bringing in volunteers.
2. The Washington, D.C.-based Visions in Action (www.visionsinaction.org) seeks an earthquake relief volunteer immediately for a two to four-week trip to Haiti to assess needs and determine how VIA can best respond to the crisis.
3. The Global Volunteer Network is now working to implement a long-term, sustainable volunteer project in Haiti. Volunteers are needed from one week to six months to help with working with children; teaching; health/medical; building and construction; counseling; or business development.
4. Massachusetts-based Ministries of Aides International, a humanitarian organization focusing on needy children worldwide, urgently needs volunteers to help distribute supplies and assist nurses and physicians in their work to help the victims of the earthquake.
7. While the Red Cross isn’t accepting volunteers to travel to Haiti now, there will be a need down the road for more medical personnel, translators and others who need to receive appropriate disaster training now. The Red Cross (www.redcross.org) asks potential volunteers to contact their local Red Cross chapter for this training.
I question this entire advertisement. From my experience with the American Red Cross (ARC) they do not accept international volunteers because of the liability associated with them. Translators are generally local hires and ARC’s health related work involves training health volunteers, not doing any actual medicine. My gut feeling is that if this information came from the American Red Cross, it is being used as a ruse to get people to sign up to be trained at the local Red Cross chapter.
9. The Anir Experience is assembling three teams of volunteers to travel to Haiti July 3-17, 2010. Teams will be
15 members each for either construction, first-aid/health care or child care
What first aid will be needed in July? Six months after the earthquake, any first aid at that time will be simply from every day accidents.
10. Habitat for Humanity International is currently assessing response options in Haiti. Once the organization knows the full magnitude of the disaster, Habitat will require support from volunteers.
Again, I question whether or not Habitat for Humanity would send volunteers into disaster settings. My experience in Thailand was that the only volunteers they accepted were through the Peace Corps. Additionally there is the same question of why Habitat would bring in volunteers rather than hiring local people.
13. World Hope International (www.worldhope.org) will mobilize volunteers to assist their Haitian staff and communities in clean-up and rebuilding once the work of its first responders ebbs.
Volunteers can be profitable for aid organizations Organizations make money from either charging volunteers fees or from volunteers encouraging family members to donate. If a volunteer enjoys their experience they may become a lifelong donor to the organization. In addition, using unskilled volunteers can reduce the amount of money an aid organization spends on overheads – note: administration costs are a meaningless indicator and the focus on overheads can do more harm than good.
While these motivations for using unskilled volunteers overseas make sense from an organizational perspective, none of these reasons are based on what is best for the aid recipient. The needs of the aid recipient must always come first. Any organization that does not prioritize these needs should not get your time and money. —– Related articles: Amid Spotty Aid, Groups Try Hiring Haitians for Cash - NPR Three bad ideas for helping Haiti – Blood and Milk
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Voluntourism: what could go wrong when trying to do right
Sometimes, you need to do something
How do you know if an organization deserves your donation
Advice for volunteers in Haiti
Guidelines for volunteering overseas #1, #2, #3, #4
Well intentioned efforts to help after a disaster may make a confusing situation worse
Get to know industry standards and best practices
Why do we so often give in ways that don’t support the local economy?
« If this were your child – Haiti orphans • Advice for volunteers in Haiti »
I cringed when I saw that Visions in Action ad. I can only imagine an unqualified person randomly wandering around asking questions, at a time when no one has the time or inclination to answer. Also, I volunteered with VIA in the mid-90′s in Kenya and they had numerous problems–general disorganization, not registered as an NGO in Kenya, had us on inappropriate visas (which we had to rectify with our placement organizations) and owed back taxes to the Kenyan government. To be fair, they have likely cleaned up their act since then, but I’m not sure how much.
While your observation that “parachuted” foreign volunteers sometime lack cultural competency, and “displace” local workers, the Haitian people’s suffering cannot be fixed solely by focusing on their economic needs. The presence of foreign volunteers also communicates that the world has not forgotten them, and concrete solidarity on the ground, working alongside Haitians to rebuild their country has the potential to transcend cultural differences and build bridges of understanding. This too, helps to heal the wounds.
I really enjoyed this post, particularly your insight on hiring the local population. Any idea on the leadership capacity on the ground to align and mobilize Haitian workers? And who should lead these efforts? Local leadership? NGOs? And should the leadership be organic or come from a joint relief effort/committee?
V Jaugelis,
If you were to give a Haitian that has just had their world destroyed the option of a chance to “transcend cultural differences and build bridges of understanding” or a paid job rebuilding their own community, which do you think they would choose? My bet is on the paid job.
Wounds heal much faster if you have the money to buy food to feed your children.
Saundra,
No argument with you on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: No use tending the spirit if the body is starving.
I am however resisting a reductionism which views the person solely as homo economicus. Is there no place for an embodied solidarity that comes alongside the Haitian people and works together to rebuild their country?
If you have the inclination and the time, I would be interested in your assessment of the alliance “Action by Churches Together” – Act Alliance, soon to be renamed Act International. In their relief and development efforts they value and seem to draw on local expertise and are committed to building local capacity.
I am a Lutheran pastor, and my denomination in Canada (ELCIC)is part of the ACT alliance. I have no reason to doubt that they are doing a good job, but I value your “take” as an experienced “outsider”.
Thanks!
V Jaugelis,
This post has the four steps I go through whenever I’m trying to determine if a specific type of assistance is a good idea. http://informationincontext.typepad.com/good_intentions_are_not_e/2009/06/a-quick-way-to-check-if-an-aid-project-is-good.html
I went through that process thinking about your question about the value of solidarity. In their situation, having been on the edge before, struggling to put my life back together, living in difficult conditions, I think I’d find outsiders trying to build bonds with me to be more annoying than a show of solidarity.
I wouldn’t be looking for that crosscultural support because it often requires effort – to understand what they are trying to say, to not get angry when they do something culturally insensitive, to understand and explain who they are and what they’re doing, to watch my children with overly anxious helpers – and I don’t think I’d have any energy to spare to deal with this.
I spoke with a friend stationed in Haiti right now and he said that some Haitians have started throwing rocks at people coming around to take pictures of them or do yet another needs assessment. This tells me my gut feeling might be right.
I think the numerous foreigners that are already there because they head large programs or are doctors is probably enough of a sign that the world hasn’t abandoned them.
I’ve looked at your organization’s site and I’ll give my thoughts in an email.
Cheers,
Saundra
There is something that rings somewhat alarmist about this post, and which disturbed my otherwise highly skeptical approach to practically everything.
I really think you absolutely need to be clear about where your own skepticism about non-governmental organisations begins regarding the benefits of all this “help” that is pouring out for “poor Haiti”, and your own (clearly limited) understanding of how and why volunteer organisations do what they do.
This post might have more usefully focused on distinguishing between the structures of volunteer-run organisations (like Habitat for Humanity, Red Cross, Peace Corps, and many other much smaller entities) and organisations that seek and depend on profit from creating opportunities for volunteers i.e. where people pay to participate in often little more than a do-gooder vacation.
International NGO’s have been a huge, huge part of the reason that Port-au-Prince/Haiti is in such a bad situation right now. As such, Haitians are no strangers to over-paid college grads & “volunteers” running around the place, doing all kinds of things, some useful, some not. The same NGOs have also been hiring local Haitian workers, albeit in limited capacities, and mostly to serve the imported staff’s needs as drivers, translators, cooks, glorified personal secretaries/assistants, go-betweens and labourers. The problem is not the flooding of the place with “volunteers” over and against using local labour. Volunteers also help to “feed” the local economy by buying things at sometimes inflated prices, paying for their lodging, meals, transportation, etc. So, your stressing the importance of supporting the “local economy” here tells me that you don’t actually know what the local economy looks like in Haiti in the first place. This also sounds like a softer version of the neo-liberal argument about “the need to put Haitians to work”, and no attention to what they are to be paid.
The fundamental problem with many of these NGO’s is the relationship of that organisation to Haitian society, and how it helps to shape volunteers’ attitudes, outlooks and interactions with Haitians.
I share your criticism about the paternalism that informs the “do-gooder” mentality of many North Americans and Europeans. But the antidote to that is not reduce Haitians to money-starved victims unable to achieve what you imagine as their perceived economic needs, and who will miraculously be able to use that money in exactly the way that you imagine. In some cases, the money one paid for the plane ticket can do some specific good (mind you, you don’t even say how, presuming that you can even make such a judgment of millions of people you don’t know) if one is able to channel it directly to the need. But, in a society where the resources are still (think Montreal, Red Cross) held in the hands of governments & NGO’s, volunteers might be actually quite useful in facilitating the transfer of those resources to Haitians.
I think it is more important to urge interested persons to inquire about what kind of relationships such organisations already have with the communities with/in which they work, and what kinds of transfer of knowledge/information/skills are intended or anticipated via one’s status as a volunteer. It is only by so that can one really gauge what the best strategy would be: ie. donate monies, equipment, etc. instead of showing up, etc. And it is only when people start asking those questions of the organisations, will the latter start to adjust and tighten up their loosey-goosey ways of doing things that often leave volunteers disappointed or even angry at the ways they were duped into an experience that could have been much richer and useful for all around.
I would have to question the absoluteness of your critique of volunteers for construction/rebuilding in Haiti. There were thousands of homes destroyed by the earthquake. Over 1.5 million are estimated to have been rendered homeless. The mid- to long-term issue will be homeless refugees. So the critical need is for homes to be rebuilt. What’s the point of having a job if you go home to a tent? The quicker they can build these homes, the better.
An influx of volunteer labor will allow more homes to be built quicker, alleviating homelessness faster than solely relying on endogenous labor. You are assuming that the task before them is small enough to be taken on effectively by the people there. Just as their cemeteries have exceeded capacity due to the massive influx of the deceased, their construction industry is not large enough to tackle the task of building thousands of homes in a short period of time.
Jesse,
The houses won’t be built in a short period of time. It is likely that some people will live in temporary houses for four or five years.
Rushing housing construction will be problematic because there are always land ownership issues after a disaster. The land titles will have to be cleared up or the same issues will occur as happened in Thailand where people being kicked out of their new houses because they didn’t own the land under them. By the time the dispute it was brought to court the organization was long gone and the problem was left to the government to solve.
In addition there will need to be the basic infrastructure such as sewage, water, and electricity in place before the houses or built or else it will be far more expensive and problematic to put them in after wards. Until there is water, sewage, and electricity, people may refuse to move out of their temporary housing because it has all that. This has also happened.
Unfortunately, it will be a much slower process than you are envisioning.
Good post with very useful information and the comments also, are insightful.
I have some concerns about faith-based organizations whose beliefs negate the reproductive rights of and keep women in a subservient role to males. The Lutheran Church (in the US but I hope not in Canada), among many, which promoted the right of males to have power over females in not an acceptable NGO to work with women and girls.
Jay
KP,
Some organizations, such as Oxfam, already have programs in place which pay local people to clean up the rubble. Which organizations hire local people, what they are hired to do, and how much they are paid will vary by organization and will depend on each organization’s programs and hiring policies.
Obviously, most local or national aid organizations will hire either locally or from within the country. For international organizations the hiring policies vary with each organization.
Many organizations have policies and procedures in place that prioritize hiring people from the areas being reconstructed to do most or all of the construction or cleanup work. Several international organizations also have policies of only hiring international staff for positions that cannot be filled locally, and then mentoring local people to eventually replace most or all foreign staff.
Unfortunately, not all international organizations have this policy. There are many instances after a disaster where people in temporary camps have the needed skills but are viewed only as disaster victims. To encourage more organizations to establish policies of hiring locally whenever possible look on their websites for information on their hiring and mentoring process before giving.
It’s also worth noting that paying people to work, while pumping money into the local economy and giving people the freedom to spend the funds according to their own needs, can be seen as an administration cost. The current emphasis by donors of finding organizations with the lowest administration costs can place organizations that hire local people in a less favorable position than organizations that rely on foreign or local volunteers. This is also something donors should consider before making funding decisions.
Jay,
Re: Lutherans and reproductive rights.
The Lutheran Church is not monolithic but fragmented among several denominations both in the US and Canada (and across the world). Regarding social values, you will find those denominations spread across a continuum regarding their positions on social issues including women’s reproductive rights.
Both the Evangelical Church in America ( ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) do not promote the right of any human being to have power over another, including that of males over females.
I fully concur with your listings of reputable organisations to go with. Whenever the Tsunami hit Thailand there was lots of aid that went missing due to mismanagement, bribery and other illicit schemes and now the reclaimed land is being used to build hotels and venues and the native people have been displaced.
Something similar may happen in Haiti (although I hope not) if we don’t have ‘aware’ people watching how aid gets distributed.
I would like to mention Idealist.org as a place to find reputable smaller organisations which run grassroots NGOs projects for longterm development.
Thanks for the link to Blood and Milk – interesting musings there.
Okay all you do gooders. Let’s buy land in Haiti and start
building homes out of converted steel, cargo containers,
and install all the utilities. Contact Prof. Richard j. . Martin
of Global Containers Partnership: Ngpinc5@comcast.net
Let’s put all our blow hard politicians to shame.
Prof. Martin has already designed and supervised the
construction of several cargo container schools- take a
look. Irv
I am a Nigerian, I have been trying to volunteer in Haiti, but a deluge of offerings keep me wondering if they were real. Someone experienced should please recommend one for me.