International NGOs have the potential to be world leaders in the provision of a better world for millions of people, instead they abuse their usually tax-exempt position, breaking promises and leaving people in misery.
Watch a video of this report here:
Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern promised ‘brand new communities’ for earthquake stricken Haiti that would really ‘make donors proud’. 700 Houses were supposed to be built by January of 2013, yet only six were ever completed.
Former Red Cross employees blame a lack of ‘know-how’ and ‘development experience’. So, what exactly is anyone doing donating even a penny towards their ’causes’?
The Red Cross would end up subcontracting its development activities to other unknown groups, who would the claim extraordinary overhead and management costs.
Allegedly, the Red Cross actively discouraged the participation of local populations and officials. A key factor, widely known in academia, to contribute to the destructive use of ‘aid’.
Over $140,000 was spent on housing a foreign project manager and a focus was placed upon programs that would generate good publicity for the NGO before anything else.
CEO McGovern reported five years after the disaster that “Millions of Haitians are safer, healthier, more resilient, and better prepared for future disasters thanks to generous donations to the American Red Cross”.
Haiti’s Prime Minister, on the other hand, thinks quite differently. Stressing the entire population of Haiti is only around 10 million, Jean-Max Bellerive said “no, no, it’s not possible”.
A former Red Cross official suggests helping those millions of people was the last thing on the NGO’s agenda, as they instead saw the crisis as “a spectacular fundraising opportunity”.
How very sad. Remember, aid does not always aid.
‘Where’s the $500 mn?’ Red Cross promises houses for 130,000 Haitians, ’builds only 6’
RT reports:
An investigation has found that the American Red Cross wasted $500 million in its bid to help Haiti, underperformed in its programs, and then tried to cover it up. Despite the NGO’s celebrated success, insider accounts point to failures.
When a devastating earthquake struck the Western hemisphere’s poorest country in 2010, the American Red Cross was one of the organizations at the forefront of the humanitarian effort to rebuild it a year later, launching a multi-million-dollar effort.
The main program – LAMIKA (a Creole acronym for ‘A Better Life in My Neighborhood’) – was to build hundreds of permanent homes to house some 130,000 people living in abject poverty after the quake.
Now, in 2015, the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Campeche is as dilapidated as ever, with hardly any new buildings, trash strewn around, animals walking the streets, and people enduring sub-standard conditions in self-made shacks.
Continue reading the full story on RT
