The devastating earthquake that struck Haiti five years ago was followed by a flood, as billions of dollars were poured into a reconstruction effort largely led by private nongovernmental organizations.
Almost immediately, Haitians, activists, and well-wishing donors the world over began to ask, “Where did the money go?”
This summer, ProPublica and NPR released a report on exactly where some of that money went. The headline—“How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes”—neatly summed up the beloved charity’s big-picture failures in the country. But perhaps the most damning parts of the report concerned the Red Cross’s over-reliance on non-Haitian employees, who were highly compensated despite often not even speaking the local Creole or French.
