By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
New York Times (blog)
The silver lining to a tragedy like the Haiti earthquake is that it gets Americans focused on that country’s problems and reaching into their pockets to try to help. We may ignore Haiti’s day-to-day needs, but after the earthquake the outpouring truly was magnificent.
There is some risk, though, that that outpouring leads to less money going to the day-to-day needs in other countries. I had an interesting email from Mark Rosasco, who runs Kasumisou Foundation, which works with AIDS patients in Cambodia. Mark writes:
As soon as we heard the tragic news from Haiti we knew that, once again, our clients too would be ‘collateral damage’ of that catastrophe. Quite understandably, the money from the small donors always follows the TV cameras so when there is a really horrific catastrophe anywhere on the planet the school kids, the church groups, the women’s clubs, etc. – in short the very groups on whom small foundations like mine rely to keep us going – shift their attention and their fundraising energies to whatever happens to be the calamity of the month….Tragedies such as the Haitian earthquake should inspire us all to increase our charitable giving and not simply to redirect our donations to the area of most immediate need.
In an ideal world, the Haiti earthquake would awaken our sense of compassion and empathy, and lead us to be more engaged with needs all over the world. But my hunch is that Mark is right: in the real world, more giving to Haiti means less support for other projects, whether in Cambodia or in the South Bronx. Certainly the Tsunami sucked away all the attention from Darfur for a crucial six months. And the Iraq War diverted attention from every crisis all over the world.
For those of you in this space, is that your experience? When you heard of the Haiti quake, did you flinch and think how you could cut budgets?
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