Blog Day Afternoon 2 of 5 - Get Sh*t Done Now!

I want to share a story here.

On the 12th of January, this year, as you well know, Haiti was hit with a catastrophic 7.0 mega-something earthquake causing immense damage and ending the lives of over a quarter of a million Haitians. The event most severely affected the capital city of Port-au-Prince, the coastal city of Léogâne, and the Southern city of Jacmel (population 40,000).

When you donate to a non-profit who is supposed to provide aide to disaster victims (Red Cross) you rarely ever get to see your money at work. Organizations will do their best to take video and publicize the work they do, but it becomes difficult to know that your donation made immediate effect.

The first boat full of supplies to reach Jacmel was not the Red Cross, not Doctors Without Borders, not any huge multinational humanitarian organization. It was a hero named Sebastian Velez with supplies bought by money from the AHA. Now, I promise to stop plugging the AHA here, but what I really want to put across is what Sebastian did that was so novel.

He knew what to do and he just did it.

If you get to know Sebastian, and I suggest you do, you'll get the sense he is direct to the point. He won't talk your ear off, but what he will say comes with a sense of urgency. "We all recognize what needs to happen. It's time we stopped talking about it and just help."

On the day of the earthquake, Sebastian, who was at the time providing aid near the Haitian/Dominican border, made a call to the AHA. He told them he was going to Jacmel to help, and needed money for supplies. And the donors who sent the money got to see exactly where it went. And very quickly at that. Within days he arranged for a boat, aquired the funds, bought the supplies, and delivered them (over $100,000 in medical supplies alone).



It was not so hard. It took less than a day. But it made a huge difference. You reading this right now- I guarantee you have at one point transported a large load of things.

Why then, when something like this happens, is there such a long delay in getting relief where it is needed? How long can large organizations wait before realizing there is a need? How about this- WHAT THE **** ARE WE WAITING FOR?!?!

It was a feeling we all had as we watched our fellow Americans drown in New Orleans and it took days for help to arrive. How it this possible? We have helicopters, boats and bottled water. If we have one thing in America, its bottled water. Why are volunteers, shippers, pilots not getting this taken care of sooner. Why is there not a network in place to get the means to the Sebastians of the world, so relief arrives even sooner?



So here is my idea. It is crude and idealistic, but I believe not impossible. Why not have a worldwide network of people with access to transportation vessels, and when something like this happens we speed past all the bureaucracy and just get the tings there. If I can get any DVD sent to my apartment by the very next day, then why not thousands of gallons of drinking water?

Its just the beginning of GSDN.org (Get Sh*t Done Now) which will be funded by donors like you, who are tired of feeling helpless when you see human suffering on the news. Let's get started! Who is with me?