Haiti

Rose and I have made the decision to donate what we feel we can afford to Medicins Sans Frontiers to support their efforts helping Haiti recover from the devastation of the recent earthquake. I've been debating with myself ever since we decided to do so whether I should share that we're donating with others. I feel like it cheapens the act of giving if you advertise it, but I've decided to write about it here in the hope that I might inspire someone else to give, as well.

I was a bit surprised at how difficult it felt to part with was came to only about a day's income to help someone else. How selfishly must I be wired - I'll go without a nice dinner out one or two nights this year, and someone I never met may get life-saving medical treatment or be able to feed his hungry children or get help rebuilding a home that was there last week and is now simply gone. And it took me a day and a half of contemplation and my wife's suggestion to convince me to actually go through with it.

One of the reasons I was reluctant, in addition to my own inherent crapulence, was the feeling that there wasn't much that I could do to help. Having done a bit of reading on the subject, though, I'm persuaded that there are a large number of organizations that do pretty remarkable disaster relief work. I chose Medicins Sans Frontiers in part in wonderment at the technology they have available for rapid disaster response; within a day of the earthquake they had built an entire inflatable hospital and were delivering babies and performing trauma surgery.

Please don't feel like I'm trying to pressure you into giving money. I'm not Sally Struthers - this is just something that feels important to me. If donating money to charity isn't your bag, or you can't afford it, you're still cool in my book. If you are interested, though, here are a couple of resources you can check out: Charity Navigator rates charity organizations based on criteria like financial transparency and the efficiency with which donated money is used. And for Germans, the Tagesschau website has a list of Spendenkonten for reputable charities that you can donate to via Überweisung.

And now, a fun fact, because what's the point of reading the American Umlaut if you don't learn something you don't need to know? In Germany, if you donate money to Medicins Sans Frontiers but don't tell them where to send your tax receipt, they will contact you by means of transferring one cent back into your bank account, with a telephone number in the comment field that you can call to give them your address. Their website explains that this is by far the cheapest way to make contact; even a two-minute local phone call is about €0.06 here. Clever, no?