Funding a Relief Project

photo credit:
United Nations Development Programme

I posted my original  comment on disaster relief requirements approximately ONE HOUR before the quake hit Haiti . You can see yesterday’s  repost  here …. so what are the relevant notes from today’s news? (quotes compiled from multiple wire stories.)

“It’s because they’re so vulnerable, any event tips the balance,” said Cutter, director of the school’s Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute. “They don’t have the kind of resiliency that other nations have.”

—- lack of resiliency – noted as the issue

“That vulnerability will be felt first in the water. In a major disaster, time is of the essence, and survivors will succumb to thirst and dehydration much faster than malnutrition. With drinking water distribution systems destroyed – and survivors crammed into camps without much sanitation – water supplies could quickly become contaminated..”

—- clean water, sanitation, and the problem of “relief camps” – noted

“That fear of disease is often overplayed,” says Dr. Demetrios Pyrros, the president of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine. “It’s going to be important to deal with people’s day to day injuries.”

— triage and disease prevention in “refugee” camps requirements – noted

“If you look at neighboring Cuba, they have a very good emergency management infrastructure,” Tierney said. “That’s partly because of the way they organize the country from the block upward.”

—- block level. block level. block level. noted.

Excuse the venting, please, but I am heartsick and furious. WE KNOW THIS STUFF. We’ve known it for YEARS. Resilience cannot be deferred for funding, for niceties, for a structured bureaucratic response.

All the money people like you are contributing right now isn’t going to do a damned thing for the people on the ground, because money is not real wealth, it’s potential wealth. They need reality, not potential, and they most certainly don’t need 25% or more going for “institutional overhead” and the delays of centralized “relief” providers, no matter how well-meaning they are. The $5 million the American Red Cross has raised in one day via texts could, I believe, pay for 2500 nodes. At one a block, at 100 people per block, that’s about 17 square miles and 250,000 people covered. Stretching it, you could easily double that. No waiting for fresh water to be shipped in. Reduced transportation of the injured. Less “refuge camp” bad sanitation and contagion. Emergency communications.

So here’s the deal – I am going to build it, one way or another, this year. I could use your help, if you’re willing to contribute to it. The governments won’t – the corporations won’t – the non-profits won’t. I would dearly love to be proven wrong on that, but I don’t see it. I’d fund it out of pocket, but I don’t have a grand, let alone 20. (For a comparison as to what 20k can get you in the Land of Money – 2-3 months of a project manager’s time. That’s it.)

I believe that a prototype full-resiliency node can be developed for less than $20,000 in total cost, in less than 6 months.

It’s “too small” for conventional funding, and has attracted zero interest from the venture community. So far – after talking about it for over a year – the only people interested in it are people in the field, not in the offices.

I don’t have a corporation or a non-profit. There’s just me and a paypal account – gregnburton@gmail.com. If you’d like to contribute, send what you can. A couple of grand will help to start, and at least let me focus on this project for some time.

Port Au Prince is just one set of slums. A billion people live in slums right now. Think about it – and if your response is “I’d rather invest to protect myself from refugees or offer them relief after the fact  than make sure they aren’t refugees to begin with” then so be it. It’s your choice, and I respect it either way.

Sincerely,
Greg