This is not a game.

The headlines about Haiti have been sobering. Pictures of buildings in ruins and people who are frustrated, hurt and suffering are all over the news. I’ve already donated to charity, but I’m not finished. I hope that readers of this blog are not finished donating either.

Please have a brief look at this post I wrote on my original blog over 2 years ago.  I was in games class, where we had assignments that required us to play games and write about them every week.  The game I reviewed in this post was named Ayiti and is a game about Haiti.  If you take a minute or two to scan over this post, you will see why I am not finished donating to Haiti.  If you are unfamiliar with the issues being faced by people living in this island nation, playing this game will give you quite an education.  Before you decide that I’m being played like a fiddle by the game’s designer…I’m no idiot.  I realize that the people who designed the game had certain goals in mind, but, based on the few people I’ve met from Haiti, I’m guessing that there’s not much over-dramatization in this particular case.  If you watch the coverage on the news, it’s not hard to see how little many of the people in Haiti had before they lost more than even they thought possible in the earthquake. We’re talking about a country that no longer has a presidential residence, a parliamentary building or a tax office.

This link is for the Wall Street Journal’s map of the damage. It has 3 pages so be sure to click the arrow.

There is currently a lot of media coverage around how effective different charitable organizations are in getting aid to people who need it.  Today, as I was rooting around on American consumer advocate, Clark Howard’s web-site for purely selfish reasons, I discovered that Clark has posted a link to the American Institute of Philanthropy which shows ratings for different charities of how well they’ve gotten aid to people.  Please people, let’s put aside our bickering around metrics, and give a few more dollars.

Here are the charities that had an A+

International Rescue Committee

UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) (I might be atheist, but last time I checked, a bottle of water was still non-demoninational.)

International Medical Corp.

Note: Red Cross got an A- but I’m linking to them anyway.