Volunteering In Relief Work

No Comments | April 8th, 2007 | Trackback

In the wake of a natural or other disaster, it may seems that any help available is useful. In theory, this may be true, but in practice, too many people can just add to the confusion and congestion. As a result, nearly all relief agencies will accept only trained and qualified people as volunteers; well-meaning travelers who need supervision may end up creating more work for the staff and slowing the relief effort down. Certainly contributions have been and can be made by average people, but in general relief agencies do not seek out unskilled volunteers.

Even when only qualified staff are involved, inter-organization coordination is paramount. In Indonesia, for example, after the 2006 earthquake, one of the issues was not that medical supplies and materials for temporary housing weren’t available, but that they couldn’t get through due to terrible congestion (which occurred for a number of reasons, including narrow roads. It’s quite likely as well that the vast number of organizations involved overlapped in some of their efforts. This is not to say there was some simple solution for avoiding it all, or to cast a negative light on relief efforts – but to illustrate how “too much” can be not only needless excess but can actually pose problems.

So how can you help?

While issues like the tsunami make the news when the natural disaster hits and then fade away, the resulting problems most definitely do not fade away. People who lost their homes and towns in the 2004 tsunami in many countries still face a myriad of problems, perhaps more serious as public attention wanes and moves on to the next disaster. You can volunteer to help, even long after the initial crisis. One organization working with a tsunami-affected town in Thailand is the Tsunami Volunteer Center.