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And I could really use some help! I basically just have this link, and any money donated on that page is under my name, but goes to Random Acts' Hope to Haiti campaign. They've been fundraising for the past two years to build a children's center that will house 100+ orphans of the earthquake, who are currently still living in tent cities. It'll also provide food, clean water, and education for both the children who live there and the others that live in Jacmel.

I'm not asking you guys to donate (but if you could that'd be incredible and I would love you long time) but if you could help me spread the word and give out that link, that'd be wonderful! I don't really know anyone with money to donate, cause most of my friends are also broke college kids T-T But it's really an amazing cause and I'm honored to be involved in it. And a bonus, if I raised $5k, I'd be offered a spot on their volunteer trip in June, though it would be completely out of pocket. None of the money donated goes to me in any way. I'm not really expecting to raise that much, but I'd like to try anyway.

I'll probably be heading around to some churches here in town, and maybe some doctors' offices and such to see if they'd be willing to help in some way. If any of you guys have any ideas of other things I could do, I'm all ears :)

s^ | Kay

I'm confused. If the trip is out of pocket and it's a volunteer trip (sans the volunteers), why not just go yourself, donate money in person and offer to help/look for somewhere to help. You know, all the good deeds without the middle man?

I mean I could do that, theoretically, but the point is less me going to Haiti and more of raising money for this charity that is doing so much good down there and spreading the word about it. It's a great cause regardless of the trip. If I just flew down there to help, I'd still be paying out of pocket for that and they wouldn't even get any donations out of it.

Also, Haiti is probably beyond a third world country, and i'd rather not go wandering around there alone :P

s^ | Kay

With getting business to donate to something like this is comparable to a company sponsoring a little league team: they'd want their name attached to it in some way. If they were to donate money and no one would know, then I'd argue that they're likely to not give a shit. However, if their name would go on a list of corporations/whatever that donated, or if they had a poster they could put up in the lobby or something, I'd imagine that would motivate them as it improves their image in the community and will this increase their bottom-line. In short, just giving away money does nothing for someone's bottom-line, you need to make this an investment for them.

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sunshine.kittens.bubblegum.happythoughts

Scam.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

How so?

s^ | Kay

Knowing Aestu, his answer will likely be: Because you're a woman.

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sunshine.kittens.bubblegum.happythoughts

The answer would be obvious if you weren't a woman.

I don't doubt there's a real building being built in Haiti meeting the description in the article - a skeletal structure with no power, water or utilities (i.e., utterly ineffectual and useless). Actually, it sounds most similar to the Ryugyong Hotel in Norh Korea, a giant 105-story hotel with a complete superstructure but no power, water or utilities, that exists for the same reason that structure does - as a showpiece, a justification for those who are getting the real gains from the efforts.

Building *a* single building isn't hard, honestly. Building a two-story superstructure, with no utilities, over the course of two years, then holding out for more cash, strikes me as a typical "Clearance Sale Extended Another Week" scam.

The first red flag, for me, is the kind of aggressive Ponzi-like fundraising incentive program they have - trying to push people to bring in as many donations as possible and refer others to do the same, with the prospect of travel (a common element in incentive scams because it is easy to construct all kinds of loopholes to not deliver - everyone's "won" a "Caribbean cruise" from a telemarketer at some point) or lotteries (also a good way to cop out of delivery).

Reading the FAQ - Q: "Will Misha be there?' A: "He has not confirmed exact dates yet but plans to be there for at least three days." This is another red flag. The most classic trick used by cults of personality (not only Moonies but also all political causes, celebrities and the media) is to establish a sense of distance and foreboding. Doing this, again, makes the cause look like smoke and mirrors.

I find their heavy reliance on social media and conventions suspicious. The implication is, they prefer to raise money remotely. Nicholas Cage wasn't far off in that movie where he played a con artist who advised his pupil, "Never con close to where you live." Legitimate charities can raise money from congregations and at local social functions; needing to shake down random people far away is another red flag.

And Haiti? Black people? Come on. There are plenty of needy here in America, people who lost their homes to Katrina (still mostly not cleaned up) or Sandy or BoA home invasions or GM layoffs or the like. Or why not help the Mexicans or any number of good causes in Brazil any other needy group in the Americas? This strikes me as a typical "starving children in Africa" ploy.

They say "we" took two trips to Haiti "ourselves". I read through the description of their trip. The volunteers described something more like a safari, they played with some rocks then went around gawking at black people. I've seen similar scams at many non-profits I visit - they put the volunteers to work doing some trivial aspect of a project (e.g., at the food bank in Boston, a herd of inept high schoolers coming in and playing with cans on a conveyor belt for a few hours, obviously lacking the skill and training to organize them in any useful way) while the substantial elements remain undone.

Moving rocks around, or playing with cans, is quite a different thing than the kind of organized, long-term mobilization necessary to deliver useful services. As I said - it is a safari - most of the money going into the effort goes not towards that kind of mobilization but into the pockets of administrators and sycophants who build the fundraising pyramid.

Is it an out-and-out scam, in the sense that the whole thing is pure fiction? No, it's real. It's just obviously not effective, and the real goal is to make money for the administrators who sit on this ineffectual thing. I've dealt with quite a few non-profits and so-called "charities" in my time, and it's pretty much the same story wherever one goes, you see the same thing, ineffective, badly organized, badly equipped efforts that amount to almost nothing, and well-funded, well-organized PR aimed at bringing more cash in to power six or seven digit salaries for the guys on top.

What about the Haitians? I am a firm believer in the Prime Directive. I oppose foreign charity as a matter of principle. I don't believe it's possible to offer charity to foreign countries without at some level adopting the chauvinistic attitude that we are in a position to help because we are, existentially, better than they are. What makes the attitude truly chauvinistic is the fact that our society has not even come close to solving its own problems with poverty, misery and want. The Haitians who need help are no worse off than old, sick, hungry or homeless Americans.

Countries like Haiti (and America) will be able to feed, clothe and protect their own people only when their people demand it, just like Westerners came to demand it through the West's long history of revolution and political upheaval. To help them now would string along the status quo, just as it has in North Korea - food aid keeps the Kims in power rather than allowing their starving people to rage at their government. That may seem like a callous, pretentious abstraction in the face of individual helpless Haitian children suffering, but I truly believe that to "help" them now, would only ensure future suffering, and put Westerners in a position of power that no man can be trusted with.

So if you really want to help, what to do? Volunteer locally with a good cause. Most causes are not good. I got tired of volunteering in Boston because so many causes were just bad. A good thing to do is to hang out at an old folks home (they are very lonely and their simple needs are often neglected by the jaded staff) or at a soup kitchen. Legitimate charities are never short on money or supplies - what they need is time and zeal.

Unfortunately, most non-profits feel threatened by zeal, because their real agenda is almost never actually helping people. As a general rule, the smaller the non-profit, the less PR they have, the more local they are, the more primitive their technology, the more interested they are in truly helping people. If you walk into a non-profit and the first thing you see is a widescreen LCD, turn and leave. I mean that quite literally.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Haitian earthquake ring a bell?

I am very much aware the event was real. So was Katrina and Sandy.

Haiti's real problem is and has been not the quake but the "ghost army" ravaging the land.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

I've consulted the FUBU judges and they will be awarding Rikki partial credit.

When I donate to charity, I go buy a bunch of blankets and then take them to a homeless shelter. Or canned foods. Or clothes, socks especially, still in the package.

But I sure as fuck don't send money to something I heard about on the internet.

I sent my entire life savings to Kony 2012 after the Youtube video made me feel bad.



Was that dumb? I thought I was helping!

You spent your life savings on Facebook stock.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

I would honestly suggest you actually research the charity, and Haiti for that matter, before you make such rash judgments.



The money is raised online because there is no physical office for Random Acts to work out of. The "employees" work on a volunteer basis and make nothing (and many of them are international). Misha lives in a small suburban house outside of LA that he built himself. He is not exactly raking in the dough for this.

So I'll give you a little bit of a play by play here. Misha formed Random Acts as a way to encourage people to help those in need, or just to brighten peoples' day, within their community. In 2010, the earthquake hit Haiti. Being active on Twitter, Misha posted a link to raise money for UNICEF's relief campaign. Within 7 days, the project had brought in 23k. Once Random Acts had its nonprofit status, the first thing he did was form the Hope to Haiti project and did a run for pledges. He ended up running 83km over 12 hours and it netted around $94k.

The first H2H project was in 2011, and one of the main parts of that trip was buying tools and equipment for a school that hoped to educate a lot of the able-bodied men on how to build seismographically sound structures so that they could continue to rebuild in Jacmel with the financial contributions from Random Acts. They started on the children's center and have funded multiple other projects there, like a dental clinic.

The children's center in question has taken two years because since it's a long-term development project, the people there are building it themselves. Which sounds a lot easier said than done. Building is slow because of the risk of dehydration from moving too quickly (for reference, the temperature in Jacmel is near 90 today, in February). Do try to remember that there are no clean water sources around, either.

As for the volunteers, well, most of them were middle aged women so it's not like they are in peak physical shape. They pretty much did as much as they could, like unloading a truck full of rocks to level out the foundation and carrying buckets of cement to the construction workers. All of the cement bricks are hand-cast, left to dry, and then they can be laid. But the actual volunteer trip was just a perk of gathering donations and spreading the word, allowing them to interact more directly with the project in return. It wasn't meant to be the end-all, be-all of contributions. They have the manpower down there, they just lack the means. Most people in Haiti live off less than a dollar a day. What can they really do with that to improve things themselves?

Last year, they mostly installed water catchment systems, helped with construction on the girls' dormitory, and painted one of the orphanages and a few of the homes (which the students of the school they funded built).



The fact that he hasn't confirmed exact dates is because the trip is in June and the project hasn't even officially been announced yet. I just happened to be stalking the page and noticed it had changed to include the dates and information for the upcoming trip. But I don't really see how it makes it look like smoke and mirrors.



What makes Haitians less deserving of aid than any other needy groups? The fact of the matter was, the timing of the earthquake directly coincided with the formation of the charity. Misha had spent time in Haiti years ago and had firsthand knowledge of what things were like before the earthquake, much less after.

But yeah. I'm tired and I have to get to class, but this is really just one project that they run. They provide people funds for random acts of kindness in their community. Care packages for the homeless in LA, bikes to people in a park in Paterson, NJ (where they also ran into a little boy whose father was laid off, and bought them both new shoes), toys for children in Mexico, a new bed for an elderly couple, supplies for seniors' pets who were having trouble making it to the store, etc.

And I do volunteer in my community. Helped put together care packages for the elderly for Christmas, making Easter baskets for homeless children in a few weeks, regularly volunteer at an animal rescue (and donate supplies). I've done health screenings at homeless shelters, senior centers, public libraries, the county fair. Health education for kids at elementary schools, youth centers, after school programs, and the YMCA. Helped sort food at the food bank, served food at the Homeless Coalition in Daytona. Entertained kids at the domestic abuse shelter while their moms got medical care. And Random Acts just gave me $500 to take my friend's two kids shopping for new toys after their house burned down in December. We're going shopping Saturday.

It's the little things you do for people when they know you don't have to, when they don't expect it, and when they need it most that they remember it. That's what Random Acts is about, and that's why I'm so passionate about it.

s^ | Kay