The Wall Street Journal has an article today on some of the "interesting" items donated by well-meaning people as relief:
Sri Lanka Is Grateful, but what to do with the Ski Parkas?
Well-Meaning Donors send heaps of Useless Stuff; Pajama Tops, No Bottoms
The grateful people of Sri Lanka would like to make a humble request to all those who have offered succor to its devastated tsunami victims: Please, no more ski jackets, moisturizing gel or Viagra. The recent outpouring of tsunami support has brought with it a mountain of unusable stuff from the Western world. That includes cozy winter hats, Arctic-weather tents, cologne and thong underwear. Dubbed "frustrated cargo" by aid workers -- because it often has nowhere to go -- these misfit items are gathering dust in warehouses and creating major headaches for relief workers in the field.
Mounds of donated clothes litter the coastal highway south of Colombo. Bottled water from European mountain streams is flowing freely, raising concern about empties littering the jungle. Medicines that are no longer needed, such as morphine, are feared to be loose in the country. Some people are putting items of no apparent local value to creative use.
Impakt Aid, a Sri Lankan group, cites two dozen goose-down jackets it recently received from a European relief agency. The group forwarded the coats to a refugee camp. There, they were used to wrap babies without diapers. "People are just bringing anything and everything," says Melanie Kanaka, a World Bank administrator who is helping coordinate aid in the battered town of Galle. "We don't have the resources in this country to sort it all out." Many vital needs still aren't being met, even as marginal donations pile up. Government figures record the arrival of 30,000 sheets, but only 100 mattresses. Colombo's main airport says it received 5,000 pajama tops from Qantas Airways, but no bottoms to go with them.
The airline will not comment beyond saying that it sent a planeload of supplies to Sri Lanka, primarily medical supplies.
Many of the country's more than 300 refugee camps face critical shortages of cough syrup and infection-fighting creams -- even though there are plenty of skimpy undergarments.
I am surprised that some people are sending these things. Also, the various relief agencies do have published guidelines for what is needed. For someone sending stuff over there without going through an agency, your basic SHTF bag contents would be best -- magnified by about 100 times of course. Jen and I just gave cash to an agency that has a known 6% overhead (some places have up to 30% overhead -- nice offices too!!)
