OT: Donating to the Nepali Earthquake Relief

We should have more threads like this as I check this blog constantly and because of this thread remembered to make a donation to the Red Cross. Cheers.

https://life.indiegogo.com/fundraisers/1240508?fb_action_ids=1020386662…

Here is another fundraiser associated with ANMF on Indiegogo. I visited the Darjeeling/Kalimpong - Nepal region about a decade ago. It was an amazing experience, but I couldn't directly cross over due to the civil war. If the Kathmandu area is anything like Darjeeling and Kalimpong, the infrastructure was no way prepped for something like this. Every bit helps.  

Gotta give the drivers props though. Driving up one way roads up mountains with no railings is scary as hell when peeking over the edge. 

Here's the Crowdwise link. It allows you to pick from all the different Nepal relief efforts including those that have been liked upthread.

I will preface this comment by saying that disaster preparedness and response is my field, although my organization doesn't work in Nepal and won't be responding to the disaster there.

1. If you feel moved to donate, please donate cash and do not even think about donating material goods or food. 

2. A donation to the Red Cross (ARC) can be great but they are comparatively flush and have a huge national donor base. That's not a knock on them or against donating to them, they do great work and I respect my colleagues there a great deal. However...

3. If you want to give to a responder where your contribution could make a bigger relative difference, consider donating to a smaller NGO. FWIW, I'm going to donate to Handicap International, because they are one of the few organizations I know of that prioritizes mental health post-disaster. Disasters can be traumatizing and things like occupational therapy, especially for children, are extremely important to a community's recovery and are very often neglected in response.

4. EDIT: I realize that others have already posted links of orgs to donate to. Here's another list of US-based humanitarian organizations responding in Nepal*: http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/interaction-members-respond-nepa…;

*Which for some reason doesn't include Handicap International; as soon as I finish this comment I'm going to find out why that is because I know they're responding. 

It is one of the world's cultural jewels, and the people are warm and hospitable.  I'm sure people there are doing everything they can to help themselves, but I'm also sure that they'll need help from the rest of the world.  As the OP says, Nepal is a very poor country.  I encourage people to give if they can afford it.

My firm has about 60 staff working in Nepal as of this weekend, on development and public health projects, it's been a stressful time but we got word this morning that every staff member has been located and is alive. It's a relief, we feel fortunate, but looking at the toll creeping higher and higher drives home the reality that fortune is arbitrary and cruel. We're there because this country is poor and strife-ridden and in desperate need of help, and this happens to them. We've got a strong relationship with Red Cross already and have set up an internal matching fund with them with a very large corporate guarantee. Red Cross gets criticized after every disaster but they're always there and they know what they're doing, we've seen it up close, too many times. 

The occurance of disasters is an excellent prompt to donate, and I also encourage everyone who can to do so. I'd also encourage everyone to do some research about where their money is going and how it's likely to be used. Specifically, I'd strongly encourage givers to resist the urge in give in such a way that their money is earmarked for Nepalese disaster relief. The bottleneck in providing immediate disaster relief is generally not money (as we saw in post-earthquake Haiti, post-Sandy NY, post-tsunami Japan, etc.), and making generalized donations now can help improve the responses available for future disasters.

Along these lines, Felix Salmon, in the aftermath of Sandy, made what I thought was a strong case for giving to MSF rather than the Red Cross:

"Which isn’t to say that donating money is a bad idea, when disasters hit. But it is to say that donating money to the Red Cross might not be the best use of your dollars. My advice is to give instead to MSF, or an organization like it, which is dealing with disasters every day of the year. That gave them the experience ability to respond quickly when disaster struck in the USA — and it also means that if your money would be put to more urgent use somewhere else, like Zimbabwe or Honduras or Chad, then that’s where it will go. We should spend as much money as is needed here — but don’t force the matter and earmark $117 million for Sandy relief, when no one knows whether even the Red Cross thinks it can sensibly spend that much. The Red Cross didn’t need to promise to spend all that money on Sandy and Sandy alone, but it made that promise anyway."