For as long as I can remember the Red Cross always symbolized something positive in my head. They raised money to provide relief for those who needed it. It is an extremely noble thing to do and they were always pretty well respected because of it, but that was before the earthquakes in Haiti.
Rewind five years to 2010. An earthquake with an initial magnitude of 7.0 hit Haiti and decimated the country leaving thousands without homes, running water, or electricity. People were trapped for days under ruble and thousands died.
The Red Cross raised $500 million dollars for relief in Haiti. Which is amazing, it was one of their most successful fundraisers ever. I even remember asking my parents to donate to the relief find. But what isn't amazing is what they did with the money. They built just six houses with that money. Haiti isn't like the United States, it doesn't take nearly the same amount of money to build a home there. So where did all the money go? Those are the questions platforms like NPR and The Washington Post started asking in the summer of 2015, but with everything going on in the news it became another story that got lost in the shuffle. There was never a proper answer given to this question.
Fast forward back to present day. Thousands of people live in shacks with no clean water or electricity to this day. These are the conditions they were living in when another disaster struck, Hurricane Matthew. They had never fully recovered from the earthquakes and Hurricane Matthew really left them with nothing. When something like this happens people want to help, and they automatically think of the Red Cross.
The Red Cross is still taking donations to help those in Haiti even after what they did with the earthquake funds was brought to light. The Red Cross has been around for years and people still view it as a reliable place to donate money. There are many more reliable organizations to donate too.
Some of the ones I've worked directly with are..
-Hope for Haiti (http://hopeforhaiti.com)
-Doctors without borders (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org)
Please go and donate to one of these organizations. Just because the Red Cross isn't trustworthy, doesn't mean the Haitian people don't still need help. They've gone through so much since January 2010 and it's time that the world properly helped them recover.
