Daniel and many others are concerned that Haiti is a dangerous place to be right now. The question we debated is whether the media has overstated possible dangers to aid workers or in Port-au-Prince. We’ve both heard that recovery aid has been slow—Damon Winter on the New York Times Lens blog says in an interview with James Estrin:

I’m just amazed at the lack of relief that we’re seeing here. Every day, we go out with the intention of finding some kind of relief program happening here. And we just don’t find it. I’ve seen one U.N.-sponsored food distribution food line and that’s pretty much the only thing I encountered, beyond a local police officer who owned a water truck and who was distributing water to these really, really desperate people.

But as Estrin points out, can you really call some people fighting over meager supplies looting? Natalie Hopkinson at The Root argues that the media, in this case, the New York Times, is too quick to interpret images of black survivors who are possibly foraging for food both in Haiti and New Orleans during Katrina as looters.

And there’s a sense that looting, violence or other security issues could be part of the reason aid isn’t getting disseminated across Port-au-Prince quickly or efficiently. Daniel says the videos that he’s seen on CNN and online look like “Hell on Earth” (I haven’t watched any video coverage, have just been reading articles). He saw it reported on Rachel Maddow’s show that neighborhoods have set up roadblocks of corpses. We both heard that two aid workers from the Dominican Republic were shot. And Lt. General Ken Keen of the U.S. Southern Command has said that “incidents of violence” are hindering aid workers and “fear of looters and robbers has been one of the factors slowing the delivery of aid.”

This seems to me like a justification for the military to come to Haiti and act like, well, the military. Implementing and enforcing curfews, controlling citizens through force and threats of violence and generally dehumanizing the already terrified population. Creating an illusion of a state of chaos in part because the military functions more efficiently and effectively when it has permission to use force and is free from restrictions of peacetime civility. It is the military, after all—but, of course, I’m not there, I can’t confirm or deny reports of violence and this is my paranoid mistrust of troop activity in general, I admit.

I would have imagined the collapsed port and single airport runway are bigger impediments to aid workers, especially since others, including Paul Farmer of Partners in Health and Michael Appleton, another photographer for the Times Lens blog, both denied rumors of widespread violence or looting—

Appleton compared it to the 2004 coup in today’s post, saying:

“It feels much safer than 2004, when there were people with knives and guns everywhere. There is much more suffering now, but people are together — in groups of hundreds — still sleeping in the street, still singing prayers.”

This leaves me no more or less convinced that Haiti is dangerous for aid workers right now. I can imagine that distributing food, water and medical supplies to desperate people can get chaotic, but isn’t that always the case in disaster response? Aren’t these organizations trained to diffuse situations and address need peacefully and efficiently?

My sense is the true danger in Haiti is to Haitians approaching a week post-earthquake without adequate help.

As always when making a charitable contribution (as when volunteering) it’s important to know where the money’s going and understand the past and present work of the organization you’re donating to. For example, the Red Cross puts money and services to aid disaster recovery, but has a much more difficult time promoting development in part because they don’t have relationships with local organizations or communities pre-disaster.

According to an Urban Institute report cited in Katy Reckdahl’s essay on the Red Cross’s response to Hurricane Katrina, “after Katrina, said the experts, the Red Cross was hindered by ‘its relative lack of integration with local networks of social welfare agencies and publice and private funders.’”

Since Haitian infrastructure was a mess before the earthquake, development-minded relief work will be even more valuable. As a donor or volunteer, I’m looking for organizations that have been operating in Haiti with low administrative costs for a long time. If it’s a Haitian organization, even better.

On the topic of kinder, smarter aid work, I’m looking for organizations that oppose militarism in disaster response. People have been making an understandably big deal about Wyclef Jean’s comment on his Yele organization site that:

President Obama has already said that the U.S. stands ‘ready to assist’ the Haitian people. The U.S. Military is the only group trained and prepared to offer that assistance immediately. They must do so as soon as possible. The international community must also rise to the occasion and help the Haitian people in every way possible.”

I’ve heard too many stories in New Orleans about violence and harassment at the hands of the National Guard during the weeks after the flood. I fear Haitian earthquake survivors will be victimized by military attempts to enforce “order” in Port-au-Prince. As Bill Quigley, Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, writes in his widely-circulated list of “Ten Thing the US Can and Should Do for Haiti,” “Do not allow US military in Haiti to point their guns at Haitians.”

It’s also my sense that reports of violence within the country are being overstated by media. While there’s undoubtedly some, but I was heartened by Partners In Health co-founder Paul Farmer’s report in Sunday’s Miami Herald:

Contrary to rumors of looting and mayhem, the city of two million was quiet, which in itself was unusual. I had never experienced Port-au-Prince without the blaring of radios and car horns. And I expect it will remain this way — calm, as long as people are offered dignity and respect and the necessities of daily survival: food, water, sanitation and shelter.

Supporting suspicions that media prefers reports of Haitians engaged in mayhem and violence over reasoned accounts of suffering and struggle, Tamiko Beyer in an extremely thoughtful post on the Kenyon Review blog brings up Haitian novelist Edwidge Danticat’s observation that when there’s not a coup, “the country disappears from people’s consciousness.” Beyer goes on to analyze the ways that media word choice avoids the harsh truth that the US government and other “developed” nations both in their obvious exploitation and their misplaced good intentions are directly responsible for conditions of poverty, starvation, corruption, and environmental devastation.

On a mildly ironic note, I’d signed up with Hands On New Orleans to do some MLK Day volunteering. Was going to landscape with Make It Right (Brad Pitt’s rebuild org in the Lower Ninth). Landscaping in New Orleans, especially in the Lower Ninth, is more than just cosmetic, you can receive steep fines if your grass is overgrown and those still displaced have a difficult time keeping their properties maintained.

Got an email on Saturday that the event was canceled and I’d been reassigned to hand out fire safety pamphlets in Gretna with the Red Cross. Needless to say, I’m here writing shit on the Internet and donating to Partners In Health instead of knocking on doors with a clipboard. Probably should have just showed up and seen for myself, but I kind of feel like I know enough already.

According to the comments in this Mercy Corp blog post by Global Emergency Operations director Randy Martin, dozens of concerned folks, some with pretty impressive qualifications, are anxious to get over there and help.

The outpouring is heartening. But as a later Mercy Corp post clarifies, “Mercy Corps does not send volunteers to our programs overseas, even in emergencies. Our staff is made up of paid professionals, and we hire people locally.”

It’s frustrating to see offers of help refused, but though I’ve never worked in disaster response, it seems there’s sound reasoning behind not taking hoards of well-intentioned yet untrained volunteers to the site of a large-scale natural disaster.

According to the Center for International Disaster Information:

The Center receives thousands of calls each year expressing the same desire to volunteer for international disaster relief assignments. The reality is that volunteers without disaster relief experience are generally not selected for relief assignments. Candidates with the greatest chance of being selected have fluency in the language of the disaster-stricken area, prior disaster relief experience, and expertise in technical fields such as medicine, communications, logistics, or water/sanitation engineering. In many cases, these professionals are already available in-country.

My first thought when I heard about the quake was, most definitely, “how do I get to Haiti?” I was ready to empty my admittedly sparse bank account and set out to lift concrete walls off starving children in Port-au-Prince.

But then I imagined myself in Haiti. Unlike many of the commenters on the Mercy Corp blog, I’ve never been to Haiti, have no disaster relief training and do not speak Haitian Creole—or French for that matter. All I’ve got are my fortune at not having lost everything in a 7.0 earthquake, my relative stamina and health, and my good intentions. No small contribution, but probably better that food, water and resources available in the country go to victims rather than those traveling to help.

It’s also worth mentioning that I won’t be collecting dry goods, clothing and toiletries to send to Haiti. According to this article by David Case in GlobalPost, sorting through care packages sent after the 2004 tsunami was an organizational nightmare for aid workers and victims.

In an effort to help, people shipped boxes, often following the instructions of local television news programs. And so in Aceh, Indonesia amid the trauma, hunger and devastation, care packages piled up containing everything from pajamas and teddy bears to birth control pills and Bibles — a hodgepodge impossible to sort through. There were boxes filled with half-used ointments and prescription drugs, as if do-gooders had cleaned out their medicine cabinets. And some unscrupulous corporations — exploiting tax write-offs for soon-to-be-expired pharmaceuticals — apparently shipped whatever had been lying around the warehouse for too long.

I still plan to go to Haiti, but not until the country stabilizes somewhat and there’s need for the relatively unskilled and untrained. Right now I’m assuming this will be once NGOs have established rebuild or reconstruction projects there. It also makes sense to wait until media coverage (and cash donations) has dropped off. Until then, I’ll follow the news closely, donate money when I can, and study Haitian Creole.

Guidestar has info on nonprofit operations and can help you figure out where to send the bucks.

Just as I decided, on instinct to go to New Orleans, I chose to work with organizations confronting scarcity of affordable housing, rebuilding and homelessness because it seemed obvious. It’s my sense that rebuilding New Orleans neighborhoods and housing stock is one of the most high profile service projects in the US.

According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, in 2007 over 166,000 volunteers from other states traveled at least 120 miles to volunteer in Louisiana. That’s 19 percent of the state’s total volunteers that year. Louisiana ranked sixth in the US in total number of long distance volunteers though the overall volunteer rate was ranked 48th. Rebuilding the Gulf Coast post-Katrina is the main reason lots of out-of-towners end up volunteering here.

A note on quoting of federal agency data: I am aware that volunteering is widely encouraged by government and supported by mainstream values, and since I’m wary of many conventionally “good” practices like marriage, employment, sobriety and exercise, this makes me a bit uneasy. But I’m going to put skepticism while I figure out if there’s actual progress to be made as a volunteer in the Crescent City. At some point, I’ll compare more anti-establishment activism with volunteerism, but for now I’m going to have faith in community service.

According to the Brookings Institution there were 228,000 houses in the storm’s flood zone, nearly 45 percent of all homes in the New Orleans metro area. The city was the 31st largest city with a population of 485,000 before the storm.

Nearly a year after the storm only half the population of Orleans Parish had returned to the city. Still the population is only back to 73 percent of pre-Katrina numbers. There’s no official data on how many residents are still displaced, but because of the influx of residents who have moved here from elsewhere it’s safe to assume that the number that still haven’t returned exceeds 27 percent.

As of September 2009, New Orleans had approximately 61,000 unoccupied residences. That’s approximately 29 percent of residences in the city. Many of these abandoned homes are occupied by the city’s 11,500 homeless.

Not a mile from the Mid-City apartment I’ve been subletting while here there used to be a camp under the I-10 overpass. And while rebuilding is extremely high profile in the city, the homeless population flies largely under the radar of voluntourist groups out in New Orleans for a week or two.

In New Orleans, like in most US cities, there’s a widespread belief that people who are homeless don’t want to work, or are at fault in some way. Needs of the homeless population here involve access to food, education, employment opportunities, legal aid, healthcare, civil rights, counseling and treatment for substance abuse, in addition to access to sustainable, affordable and safe housing.

Because of the number of homes destroyed after Hurricane Katrina, the amount of public housing demolished in the city since the storm, and increases in insurance and construction costs rental properties are significantly less affordable than they were before the storm. Section 8 housing has replaced public housing but landlords discriminate against tenants with Section 8 and the voucher program besides being overburdened can be prohibitive and difficult to navigate.

As a volunteer, I’ve tried to move beyond the obvious rebuild work and connect with organizations working on behalf of the homeless population. In the future I’ll write about some of my experiences, most notably at the Harry Tompson Center.

That’s what John Sempek is doing now that he’s gotten his life in order.

The prosecutor thinks Sempek is a model excon:

“This is kind of some way to pay back and to look at things that go on this side of the counter we like to say and hopefully maybe someday he can help other people on the other side of the counter.”

I genuinely admire John’s recovery and turnaround, and for all the reasons I’ve already started to discuss, I think volunteering can provide meaning and perspective. I have to admit though, this story makes me a little uncomfortable. Since when did turning your life around involve volunteering to help prosecute other people? This is my own skepticism about a legal system that for 16 years could do nothing more for John than put him on trial 40 times; however, I also understand that John is an adult and should be responsible for his actions when they harm others.

Volunteering in the city prosecutor’s office has changed Sempek’s view of the people who enforce the laws that he used to break.

“I was on the other side all this time and never got to see the good part about these people. I didn’t know people cared down here, the cops and the attorneys down here. On the other side you think they’re evil and don’t care, but actually they do.”

But the most interesting part about this story is not my knee-jerk discomfort with his choice of volunteer venue, but the way volunteering is working to bridge a gap between two obviously opposing parties. Empathy is an inadvertent result of Sempek’s time in the prosecutor’s office. Volunteering is exciting when it brings people from different backgrounds with different life experiences together. The prosecutor undeniably has the power, but through contact they wouldn’t likely have otherwise, he and Sempek gain some perspective, come to understand each other better and the whole experience fosters goodwill.

In this way, Sempek volunteering at the prosecutor’s office makes sense. Maybe for him, the whole thing is a way of showing himself and others how much better off he is now, of performing his own rehabilitation and privilege—if he’s volunteering for the prosecutor’s office, he’s certainly not being prosecuted. As weird and uncomfortable as it seems, it could be a way of reclaiming control over his time and making a choice about how to spend it. Helping out rather than being imprisoned or forced to do community service.

Eh, but I’m just reading the situation based on the report. I have no idea what Sempek is doing or why. I do know that volunteering can show you your own good fortune. Donating time you can afford to give, you’re rewarded with the good feelings that come from knowing you’ve made someone’s life easier and the gratitude that person shows.

[Thanks to Daniel Zier for the crappy title]

As mid-Western girls (she’s from Springfield, IL, I grew up in Chicago) who’ve come to expect a chilly reception from strangers, we were blow away by the gracious warmth of both locals and transplants we met here.

But it wasn’t simply vacation, or even charitable intentions that brought Maria to New Orleans last September. She was here in part because of the 4th anniversary of the hurricane and her experiences on the beach in Thailand during the 2004 tsunami. She’s since said she plans to take a service trip once a year. I wanted to get a sense from her of the way living through a disaster influenced her ideas about service and volunteering and I’ve transcribed relevant bits of our conversation below.

Why were you in Thailand?

We were in Japan teaching, a couple of my friends wanted to go somewhere fun for Christmas break since none of us were going home for Christmas.

What happened on the day of the tsunami?

It was our last day in Phuket and we were going back to Bangkok that day to spend our last three or four days hanging out in Bangkok. We had some time before the train was going to leave, so we went down to the beach.

We get to the beach and my friends all disperse. One friend is swimming in the ocean, another friend is walking along the beach. I was sitting up reading my book because I was feeling tired and lazy. My friend came running up and is like, “Hey, Maria, give me my camera, the ocean looks really weird.”

I looked down and the tide had gone back a good amount, way more than it should have in a few minutes time. She starts taking pictures, everybody’s pointing and talking about it, but going about their business. I go back to reading my book and all of the sudden there’s this rush of water underneath me. We grabbed what stuff was around us and we ran toward the boardwalk. It was probably a good six feet up from the sand and water. The water stopped at the boardwalk.

Everybody else was standing up on the boardwalk. All the chairs and umbrellas had been lifted up and were floating around in the ocean at this point. I don’t know what was going through our minds other than, “I’ve never seen a tide like that.” As we’re talking about it, we start to see the water go back down to where it was before.

One of my friends took off because in the initial tide she got her camera wet and she was worried about it. So the three of us were trying to figure out if we were going to go back to the hostel and try to go or if we were going to get something to eat and another wave of water rushed underneath us. This time there was a lot more and it was moving a lot faster.

It went way above the boardwalk this time. Everybody started dispersing and running in all different directions. As far as I can remember, I ran across the street and toward some buildings. There was a hotel that had a big concrete wall behind it. I ran up to the wall and the water was rushing around my waist. I didn’t see a way around the wall. I saw other people climbing up on this wall to keep from drowning or getting pulled under and so I went to jump on the wall and the tide kind of pushed me up.

I don’t know how far the water came up—it was a good four feet off the ground, at least. At some point the water started receding. To this day I don’t remember the water receding, but at some point it did because I got off the wall. I heard my friend calling out my name. She came out from around a corner. All I saw was her limping and the back of one of her legs was cut open almost to the bone and blood was coming out pretty fast. I started to panic, ran around to get to her.

By the time I got to her, she’d passed out on the ground. She was still somewhat conscious but she kind of faded in and out. I didn’t see anyone else around us at this point because I assumed everyone was moving to higher ground. I started calling out for help and this older couple comes out of the hotel. They’d see all this happen. Nothing happened to them they were fine, but they wanted to help anybody who might have been hurt. They came running over, saw me and my friend, grabbed a t-shirt and wrapped it around her leg to stop the bleeding. Grabbed a bunch of Thai people that were running around. One of them had a truck and they took my friend, put her in the truck and told me they were driving off to the hospital.

Once you got to the hospital and then to the airport, who helped you, did you say earlier it was the Red Cross?

No, I didn’t know who anyone was affiliated with but all I remember is all the emergency supplies were from the Red Cross.

Was it clear there were people there to help you, or give aid?

There was a woman, a Thai national helping us in the airport, as we went from the Phuket hospital to the Bangkok airport and were waiting for the flight to take off. Before that it was chaos. Right after the tsunami everyone was running every which way, traffic was stopped there were no taxis.

That night we left in ambulances to the airport in Phuket, we stayed overnight in that airport. My friend stayed in the ambulance because she couldn’t be outside the support they had her on. There were a bunch of ambulances. I remember a German couple vividly. They couldn’t speak very good English. The husband was badly injured. The wife was fine, but she was terrified, and so she spoke basic English to me and somehow I translated that English to something the Thai medic could understand and back and forth. I didn’t speak any German, I think I threw in a Spanish word I was so confused.

So what was your sense of aid in the aftermath of the tsunami?

If you consider the scale, and after seeing it on the news and what happened in Indonesia and the sheer panic and chaos and destruction, and all those people who are injured—I was like, “how the hell did they get all that food and water to us in the airport?” I thought it was amazing.

What did you do after the tsunami?

I went back to Japan and was there for a week and decided that I need to go home for a while. I was there for about a month, thinking about what I was gonna do. This was my last year in Japan. I didn’t know what I needed to do, but I knew I needed to work for either disaster relief or humanitarian aid, or some kind of non-profit work that made a difference.

I knew I wanted to stay in the Chicago area and DePaul’s Masters in Public Service Management was the most relevant program. They have different concentrations, you didn’t have to choose a concentration, but you could—say you wanted to go into public health, or fundraising, and I think there was an international concentration. I choose to go with the most general one, because I still wasn’t sure what I wanted.

Did it become clearer as you went through the program?

I’m still completely undecided about what I want to do with the non-profit world. It solidified my interest in it.

How so?

DePaul taught it like an MBA program and said it was an MBA program for non-profits. But your focus wasn’t on making the most money possible, it was on making the most difference possible. The whole fact the school was named for St. Vincent DePaul who’s famous for his service, and giving, seemed fitting.

They offer a lot of international and national programs like the one that brought me to New Orleans after Katrina. They only had about seven main professors and each of them had a thing they were interested in. And they were about creating a new and exciting program.

People don’t realize how active non-profits are. My mom is a nurse and she just realized she works for a nonprofit, even private schools are technically nonprofits.

What did you do when you came to New Orleans with your school?

It was with a grant writing class. It was an elective and I was like, hey an elective that lasts a week and I get to go to New Orleans, that’s pretty damn cool.

Am I right that the organization you worked with, things didn’t really work out?

I was disappointed with the organization, I was hoping to work with a really cool grassroots organization that was really into helping the people, but it turns out the manager of the organization we worked with didn’t really live in New Orleans and he only came in here, some ridiculously small amount of time. He had an extremely small staff and these huge plans and goals that were ridiculous. It was a lot of inexperience. It was giving people a lot of false hope.

If anything good came out of it though, it made me realize you can’t just label your organization a non-profit and apply for a 501(c)3 and say you do good. You have to actually be a legitimate organization and run well to make a difference.

Well and this is sort of something I’m interested in too. Knowing the truth about organizations you’re spending your time and money with.

I remember after Katrina a lot of people were sending donations to the Red Cross and the Red Cross got in trouble because they started using the money for other programs. [Ed note: This definitely happened after September 11. Not sure about Katrina.]

How did you feel when the flooding happened here?

Oh yeah. I would say I still had PTSD, and when that hit, I was like, “What the fuck is this the apocalypse?” It struck me really badly just to see that happen here in America. As much as I hate to say it, you expect that kind of chaos from third world countries because their infrastructure’s not where ours is. But then you look at what happened here, and you’re like, oh my god doesn’t matter what country you’re in.

So how’s this trip been?

Excellent. Better than expected. I came down here wanting to do something positive for New Orleans and I don’t know, people have been so friendly and doing something where you see tangible results, like siding going up on a house, and having the bruises and pain that go with it, gives you a sense of accomplishment. That is what I want out of my life, I want to be able to see tangible results with whatever I do. Theory is always good, but it doesn’t work for me. I need to see the person benefit from my actions.

I don’t know this woman and I have no clue what she did during her years of service abroad or whether she “helped,” but in that statement I heard a an all too familiar mix of privilege and good intention–the widespread notion that well-off, educated people can just show up somewhere, hang out for a while, and the comfort of their lives will rub off on those less fortunate in some nondescript way. Never mind you have no skills or experience, you have time and money to spare and because of this you’ll be able to do good and in turn feel good.

Cynical, I know. Her decision is admirable, right? Deserving of thanks and goodwill. Plus there’s something amazing about working for free. Donating time transcends the limitations of labor and expectation. It feels good. Shit’s messed up. We should all do whatever we can to improve the quality of life around the world especially since we know government cannot be counted on to care for people in need.

Ideally, the woman on the F Train became even more compassionate, aware and connected to others after her time in the Peace Corp.

But did she actually help anyone other than herself?

The idea that I can volunteer and walk away self-satisfied though I haven’t made any actual impact drives me nuts. But then I have to ask, what does it mean to make a difference?

So here is the task: figure out why and how people volunteer–who they work with, who they claim to be helping and whether they succeed or not. At the same time, find out how to be a good volunteer, choose the right organizations and tasks, and make the most of donated time. The best way to do this is by offering up my own time, as often as I can, to as many different organizations as possible.

I’ve temporarily relocated from New York City to New Orleans, the locus of need, attention and aid in the US (though not necessarily the most truly in need US city), to volunteer building and rebuilding houses and serving the city’s homeless population. This blog is about what I learn through my experience and after endlessly pestering every volunteer coordinator, project manager, house captain, non profit staffer, homeowner, homeless person, and fellow volunteer I can find about how, or even if, I can help.