If you have been following me on some of the Social Media channels I still utilize, you might have seen some of my posts about the current floods ravaging the central regions in Vietnam.
While it is heart-warming to see how Vietnam’s civil society rallies together to pool resources to support the relief & rescue efforts in the affected regions or unceremoniously travels themselves towards the flood zones to get hands on to help their fellow countrymen in need; unfortunately there are individuals and organizations out there who are exploiting the situation for their own benefits.
While help and assistance in the current situation is needed and is a sign of a working civil society where taking care of others in their wider community is perceived as personal responsibility rather than outsourcing it to some random third party organization (which usually due to their intermediary function fall prey to corruption, embezzlement and inefficiency over time) and is therefore absolutely welcome & should be fostered and supported in any way possible:
Do not give your resources blindly to anybody who claims “to do good”.
If you do not have a trust relationship and know that the people you support are actually using the resources in the way they are meant to be used, you are prone to be exploited.
Trust relationships and accountability matter.
If you work with people who you trust and have built a relationship over the years and/or they in circles and vouched for by people you trust, then there is a direct accountability to you.
If they screw you over it will have direct consequences on them and their social circles, since you most likely won’t keep quiet about them not being reliant/trustworthy.
Accountability keeps people in line and act for the best of their community (or risk being expelled from it).
Giving your resources to random people you have no connection with, do not know their social circles and community is generally a bad idea and most likely will end up with you being exploited.
Vietnam and the Vietnamese society has the resources to solve the situation
If you are living overseas and have some close connections with the affected people or people traveling to support in the affected areas – by all means, support them if it’s possible for you.
But just because somebody shows you some pictures of floods, destruction, devastation and suffering… – don’t get yourself triggered by pictures designed to exploit your human emotional response to give funds to random people for who it is a business to prey on human emotion and who might take 95% of the funds for “administrative fees” and use the other 5% to do some symbolic activities in order to obtain some media materials to raise even more funds from gullible overseas donors who get bamboozled to believe they are truly helping people in need.
…while actually ending up to support the good life of those “charity” organizations and their crooked founders and board members, who see emergency situations half-way across the globe mostly as an opportunity to raise more funds for their own organization.
While in the affected regions in Vietnam indeed a lot of relatively resource-constrained people live whose livelihoods are strongly affected by the floods of 2020, Vietnamese people are very capable and pragmatic when it comes to deal with hardships.
And moreover: There is enough money, wealth and goodwill in the country to resolve the situation locally; economic centres like Saigon, Hanoi and other places have nowadays a sufficiently large number of middle-class people who still have connections via their families to the poorer rural areas of Vietnam and are able and capable to provide resources to those in need in quick, direct, sufficient and unbureaucratic manner.
Stay clear of any charity or NGO claiming to do good half-way across the world!
Which in turn leads me to my general recommendation: Avoid donating to *any* organization whose claimed main purpose is “to provide aid” to some poor people half-way across the globe.
Most likely you are falling prey to an organization where a majority of the funds go to finance large salaries, big SUV’s, fancy hotels, hookers & blow… with the little leftover to do something locally purely used on things which help the most to raise more funds, rather than on what has the most impact on the people on the ground.
Besides: Most of the time – apart from very urgent emergencies due to immediate natural catastrophes – it is indeed better to leave the local community to resolve their own issues and problems.
People around the globe are not stupid – they know their own problems best and will work on resolving them.
Those global charity and NGO’s however for whom it is a (very profitable) business to capitalize on pictures of suffering people half-way around the globe, have not much of an incentive to really provide any meaningful assistance.
For them it’s a business and it’s about keeping up the image of having an impact so they can raise more funds – not about actually resolving the problems on the ground (which would kill their business case!).
Most likely there is enough to do within your own local community where your time, effort and resources can provide actual help to the people around you – with direct help and care and results you can see and experience
If you have via family or other connections a direct relationship with people in affected regions, it is one thing to provide targeted, direct help.
But otherwise:
DO NOT ENABLE SCAMMERS WHO PREY ON YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS!
Instead: Empower and care for your local community and its members and build a better future for those people around you within your sphere and trust circles.
