The world is filled with a lot of natural disasters victims, from victims of hurricanes to victims of earthquakes to victims of floods. But wherever the world is in a crisis there is always one group above all the others rushing to the aid of the world’s people: The Red Cross. The organization that is made to help people all over the world is actually not doing all that they say they are set out to do.
In 2010, billions of people watched on helplessly as Haiti was affected by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. It leveled buildings, destroyed homes, killed many citizens, and injured just as many. The horrible part is they were hit with two aftershocks one 5.9-magnitude and one 5.5-magnitude.
Hundreds of thousands were displaced with nowhere to turn or food or water. Thousands of people were moved by this natural disaster and people around the world poured out their hearts to help the Red Cross help those in need. The Red Cross had a reported total of $500 million dollars in the Haiti Relief Fund and thousands of food, water, and clothing donations to help those in need. They even had a long list of volunteers willing to help dig out and search for victims that were in the buildings. (Source)
With $500 million dollars, thousands of donations, and a long list of volunteers you would think that the Red Cross would build many houses to house those who were left homeless and nowhere to turn. But sadly that’s not true at all. The Red Cross gave tents to all those who were homeless with promises that they will build permanent shelter immediately. They failed all those homeless people with nowhere to turn by only building a total of 6 homes (source).
Leaving majority of the victims living in the tents or scavenging through the rubble to find anything that could be used as a mishap shelter to keep a roof of any kind over their heads. How is that fair to the men, women, and children that had no choice but depend on those who are willing to help them through The Red Cross?
Last year it was reported that the Red Cross still has left almost 60,000 people homeless living in camps with no immediate access to clean drinking water. It’s been seven years and they still only have a tent to call home (source).
But these are only the people who couldn’t scavenge anything from the rubble to build themselves a metal and concrete home like the others. After the earthquake, there was a total of 1.5 billion homeless people. That’s 1.5 billion people that depended on the Red Cross but couldn’t get the help needed.