Gail McGovern of the American Red Cross speaks on the anniversary of Haiti's earthquake. (Elena Schneider/Medill News Service)
One year after a catastrophic earthquake devastated Haiti, Gail McGovern, the head of the American Red Cross, defended the pace of the organization’s donation distribution, arguing the group was making a long-term investment in the country.
“We resisted the urge to just dump money [on Haiti],” McGovern said. “I want to spend a money through a lens of two factors–will it make our donors proud and will it do good for the Haitian people. We want to make sure we can account for every single dime.”
A report released last week by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a research organization that monitors charities, found that a majority of leading Haitian aid groups have invested only about half of the donations they’ve received.
Doctors without Borders is one of several groups which say the response has been too slow.
Unni Karunakara, president of Doctors Without Borders, told NPR it’s wrong for aid groups to start cholera fundraising appeals–Haiti suffered from a cholera outbreak this fall–when “their coffers remain filled.”
McGovern acknowledged the American Red Cross has spent only 51 percent of the donations it received, saying that some of the money was funneled into long-term housing projects and contracts.
Wednesday marks the one-year anniversary of the magnitude 7 earthquake that shook Haiti and prompted an outpouring of financial support totaling about 2 billion dollars to rebuild the country.
The earthquake killed about 230,000 people, left more than 1 million people homeless and blanketed the country with 20 million cubic feet of debris.
A year later, more than one million people are still living in make-shift tents and only 5 percent of the debris has been cleared. A cholera epidemic in the fall choked recovery.
“Haiti is a disaster-prone country,” McGovern said. “We’re working to build a culture of preparedness.”
For some aid organizations, it is not the unspent money, but the weak leadership and cooperation of the Haitian government and international community that keeps Haiti from rebuilding.
“The international community has not done enough to support good governance and effective leadership in Haiti,” Oxfam, an aid group in Haiti said in a recent report. “Donors are not coordinating their actions or adequately consulting the Haitian people.”
McGovern acknowledged these weaknesses, but reminded listeners that Haiti was a poor country with little resources before the earthquake.
“This isn’t to rebuild Haiti,” McGovern said. “This is to build Haiti up for the first time.”
Unspent aid in Haiti (Illustration by Nina Lincoff/Medill News Service. Data taken from npr.org)
