On software and job-hunting.

I recently received a call from a recruiter, responding to a job application I made. I had been jobhunting for over a year with very little success - creative work via The Merch Girl and other courses is sporadic and unpredictable, and I needed a regular source of income that wasn't parental - so any response beyond "Sorry, no", especially over the telephone, would be greeted with excitement.

She asked me if I've typed up tenders. I haven't, specifically, but I am excellent at typing and have worked with all sorts of official documents.

"What kinds?" Almost everything - strategy plans, reports, employee handbooks, student databases, contracts, articles, marketing, the whole gamut. My typing speeds are phenomenal (78 wpm, 21900 ksph) and I knew that I could deal with tenders very easily.

"And this is all in Word?" I recall a conversation I had with another recruiter, this one more focused on getting me a job and helping me apply to more entry-level non-specific work. She had given me a link to a test on Word 2007 (most of it being "find this function hidden in a really inane spot on the toolbar and don't rely on F1"), and told me to list out all the software I was proficient in.

I was incredulous. I had enough experience with all sorts of office software, starting from Lotus 1-2-3 and Harvard Graphics in my childhood (I was a bit of a dork...) through to MS Works and Wordperfect, to the MS Office Suites, and now predominantly working with OpenOffice and Google Docs. Most office suites run the same way; if you know one, you know them all. Any hitches can easily be resolved with Help pages and Google searches. Even if I wasn't familiar with them, I could look it up easily and learn it on the spot. Listing every possible software brand would take up a whole PAGE!

Surely I could just categorise them? Office software, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, desktop publishing, accounts? According to my recruiter, no - most other recruiters and HR people are after specific keywords and won't take the time to decipher what "word processing" means, let alone work out that I am pretty flexible and can deal with any sort of software.

So I said "Yes", even though I haven't really worked with Word for at least a year now. Her next question proved my regular recruiter's point:

"Do you know Adobe?"

Well, Adobe what? I know of the company, sure, but which software do you mean? Image editing like Photoshop or Illustrator? PDF managers like Acrobat? The Macromedia suite - Dreamweaver, Flash, Shockwave - that they bought over? AIR? Film editing, sound editing, 3D? Why do you need to know?

She flustered for a bit. Stumbled. Then she asked: "Do you know Adobe Writer?"

There's no such thing as Adobe Writer!

There's Adobe Acrobat, which deals with editing and writing PDFs. But were they wanting me to edit PDFs, read PDFs, create PDFs from other documents, or just fill out PDF forms? But you don't even need anything Adobe, let alone Acrobat, to do all that. (Examples: Foxit and CutePDF.) A Google search for "adobe writer" brings you information about Acrobat.

But what does your client need? What do they hope to achieve with Adobe software? Who came up with the ad to look for "Word and Adobe Writer experts" - your client, or you?

She couldn't quite answer. She just said that she didn't feel I'm quite right, but she'll keep screen, and she'll keep me on file for something else. Which is fair enough, I guess.

What doesn't seem fair is penalising people who grew up around computers and technology because they have the ability to switch and you don't have the ability to think laterally. Do recruiters even know what they're looking for? Do they understand the software they ned? What about the companies - what do they know? Do they only ask because it seems like they need to ask?

If you're a digital native, like I am, you're probably very familiar with switching between OSes and computers and working out how to run a program through context and visual clues. Yet apparently, for some reason, people with the power to hire you can't seem to give you enough trust that you do know what you are doing.

How many others have lost jobs because they said OpenOffice instead of Word? How often do computerised resume scanners catch context?

[Add your comment] [1]

exhausting conversations.

It's the same old thing, every time.

You share discussions on possible problematic uses of cultural appropriation and call out people who are ignoring their privelege. You get people asking you why you find it problematic, and you talk about how people are still being exploited for their cultural heritage, while they themselves aren't able to fully embrace their own cultural heritage without being significantly disadvantaged or discriminated against. About how it's part of larger patterns, about how it's so ingrained many don't realise it, about how people need to be more aware and take more responsibility for what they do and say.

Then those question-askers drag you into convoluted pleas of "how dare you say I'm privileged!". They say that because you have privilege your opinions are automatically invalid. They claim that you pointing out how unfair it is that someone from a dominant class can get away with looking "exotic" while the locals still suffer is "racist and elitist". And then, because you brought up examples of how this affects you now, you get told you're "taking this personally".

It's the same old patterns, the same old arguments and derails. You find yourself resending links to Racialicious, the Invisible Knapsack, to Derailing for Dummies. People much more learned and patient than you have researched this for many many years before you even started thinking about it. There's only so much you can convey in 140 characters.

You feel like a parrot. You feel like you are a recording machine stuck in a loop. You are drained. You have gone through this exact conversation how many times now? And you're still hearing the same old, same old.

(And it's frightening how it's only ever people in that Dominant Class that get all upset and repetitive. Thank goodness for those others that are being and spreading awareness.)

You've been living this directly since you were a child. You have been debating this for years. You're exhausted. You wish you could stop, that you could just ignore this and it will all go away.

But you know you can't wish it away. You know it will not go away that quickly, not at least when you're alive.

Not when your name and passport still affects your ability to get a job.
Not when you are automatically classified as "High Risk" by government agencies just for your parents' origins.
Not when speaking another language gets you told off - "hey, speak the NATIONAL LANGUAGE you fool!"
Not when your self-worth and acceptance hinges on having a skin colour, size, and features that are alien to you.
Not when just wearing something from your culture or having an accent gets you "go back to your country!!"...if you're lucky and escape physical harm.
Not when people take your appearance as an excuse to crack stupid jokes, to subconsciously place you into pigeonholes, to deny you your voice and claim to speak for you.
Not when you are denied access to welfare, to funding, to scholarships, to education, to credit - unless you can prove that you are not a dangerous dole-bludging (what dole?) FOBbie.
Not when people refuse to listen to you because you sound different, but take in your words when said by someone who looks more "normal".
Not when you are still judged against an arbitrary "normal".

Even if you decide to stop, even if you decide to just shut up - you will still face this. Over and over. People and structures will still take advantage. You will still be pigeonholed, be ostracised. And they will still keep doing this, because no one's told them the problems, because people are excusing them and celebrating their behaviour and refusing to look at the consequences. Because people have pride and when you tell them they're doing something problematic, instead of working out what the problem was, they accuse you of being accusatory.

And the patterns go on. And the debates are smothered because the other side is too tired to stand up for themselves. Because they're accused of "not following the rules" of discussion - rules set by the Dominant Class without any consultation on their end. Rules that disadvantage them from the very start.

If only it was that easy to say "I'll stop now". But until I stop being discriminated against just for anything that makes me "foreign", until the structures that keep these attitudes flowing are dismantled and new structures of real diversity and intergration are established, until I decide to submit to abuses of power and just accept that I will always be pigeonholed and put away and ignored -

- I can't stop talking.

[Add your comment] [1]

Australian immigration - too many pointless changes

I am currently applying for permanent residency in Australia. As a (possibly) perpetual permanent resident in Malaysia and holder of a Bangladesh passport, as well as a relative to many migrants, I am very familiar with the pains and hassles of the visa and residency process. Every country in the world makes it unnecessarily difficult for someone to be a resident (let alone a permanent resident or a citizen), especially if you come from a developing country, particularly one filled with potential migrants. Financial checks, character checks, layers upon layers of bureaucracy...the whole process is a mess, and yet the People in Charge never seem to think of the real-life effects of their always-changing policies.

Just yesterday the current Australian Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced that they are automatically rejecting 20,000 applications - all of whom applied before late 2007 under relaxed rules. My application was made last year so hopefully it won't be part of the churn, but the prospect of my app suddenly being cut due to the whims and fancies of whoever's in charge is frightening.

Evans claims that they are building a more targeted list of skills needed and basing applications on that, with priority given to people who already have jobs lined up. Just that last line shows how out of touch with reality the Australia Government is when it comes to migrants. Based on my experiences, and from talking to other migrants (past and present), here's what I see is problematic with current Australian immigration policy:

1. The current "skills" database isn't really a list of skills, but a list of occupations. It totally disregards the fact that many people nowadays, especially young people, don't just belong to an occupation - they often multitask, transferring skills between one occupation to another. An architect, a hairdresser, and an executive all share skills in design, problem solving, research, knowing their client, application of ideas and concepts - yet they're all treated differently.

2. Newer industries, such as the Creative Industries, are not represented in the Skills list at all. Each occupation is given a number of points according to demand, and applicants need to meet a minimum number of points to have their application approved. However, there are a lot of occupations that don't give you points at all. Anything to do with the creative industries, for example, doesn't get you points - you need to already be hired as that role for that "skill" to be useful. The only CI-related occupations I could think of that are pointed are journalistic skills - but they favour traditional media over new media, not considering that traditional media sources are currently losing ground. They claim to be updating this list, but I don't think they'll get out of their left-brain science/health kick.

3. You can only claim one "skilled occupation" on the list, regardless of your abilities. If I could claim more than one skill on that list, I'd have about 300 points easy - stage management, production, journalism, marketing, all sorts. But I could only claim one. As I said before, the list doesn't account for people who have worked across occupations and industries, and those that have changed careers. Wouldn't Australia be happy to have people that are flexible and can adapt?

4. Determining your "skilled occupation" doesn't actually involve your past experience, but rather your degree (and now where you've worked for a year). If my CV had anything to do with the occupation I could choose for my PR application, I'd be some version of youth or community worker. However, my CV and gobs of experience within the Brisbane community didn't matter one bit. According to my degree, I was qualified to be a Print Journalist (even though I haven't written for any Australian print media). They've now added a new rule saying the degree wasn't enough - you need to have one year's worth of work experience to claim it. Yet how many students are actually able to get a skilled job while doing a full-time degree (until very recently international students couldn't do part-time study) continuously over a year? Volunteering doesn't count, personal projects doesn't count, ad-hoc or short-but-regular projects (like festivals) don't count. It also significantly disadvantages people who change their minds after their degree, or who took a degree in one thing but realised that their skills and passions lay elsewhere - perhaps somewhere without a degree available.

5. It is extremely difficult for international students and migrants (especially people on Bridging visas) to get any sort of employment. The reasoning behind all these changes is the idea that migrants should be able to get a job in Australia. However, it ignores the fact that migrants are already significantly disadvantaged in the job market. Here's how:

• Stigma against minorities - just having an ethnic-sounding name can disqualify you from fair job prospects. Then they see your green passport and visa and positively freak out.
• Company policies (written or otherwise) against hiring people on student/Bridging visas due to possible lack of permanence - QUT's HR Department actually tried to tell me that they have a policy against hiring people with Bridging visas since we had no end date. It wasn't in their policy documents at all.
• Temporary residents (a.k.a. not PRs or citizens) are not allowed access to options that help with their job search - no Centrelink, grants, scholarships, skills training, Recognition of Prior Learning, job assistance, mentoring programs-  basically anything Government-funded. (Which means stuff like YAQ's JUMP and YAMP programs are right out too.) Any options tha are available, such as further study, still charge full-fee rates, which are prohibitively expensive.
• International students can only work about 20 hours a week - most part-time jobs want at least 25, and they want 9-5 hours too (which clash with uni study).

Employers don't want to hire people without a permanent visa. They won't even interview you. But the Government won't give you a visa unless you have a job. Chicken and egg?

6. It doesn't encourage entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs should be welcomed by Australia - they create jobs and opportunities, they stimulate the economy. Even people who don't make for-profit businesses, such as artsworkers or community developers, still enhance Australia's culture and lifestyle in major ways. These people are dedicating part of their existence to the betterment of Australia - but are not given any resources, support, or recognition for it. Sure, their immediate community may welcome them, but they're not the ones with the power of the Visa. The focus on jobs actually discourages entrepreneurship and innovation - you're expected to fit into a mold. Yet with the Global Financial Crisis, the idea of a "job" has changed so much - we need to rethink what it means to be employed.

7. The Immigration Department makes changes quicker than they, or anyone else, can keep up with them. Notice how they still had applications from 2007 that were unprocessed. A few months ago they mentioned more changes that would likely make my application only processed by 2012! At that rate I should skip over permanent residency and get citizenship on the spot! Yet they change the rules every year, less than that even - and expect everyone to change their lifestyles immediately to follow suit. Worse of all, they make it retroactive - so if you applied before the rules changed, and you followed everything to the letter, bad luck anyway. What a waste of time and resources for everyone involved - at least clear the backlog first before you start making sweeping changes.

8. There are no recourses for people who are suddenly negatively affected by the rule changes. 20,000 people are going to get a letter saying that even though they followed the rules, their applications will be denied because the Immigration Minister changed his mind. These people have sacrificed years of their lives, sources of income, family connections, possibly their passions and livelihoods, and have willingly put themselves through the gauntlet that is the immigration process - only to have all their hard work thrown away. The whole process costs thousands of dollars - sure, they'll refund the fee, but can you refund lost time? Some have started lives in Australia - are you going to help them transition? Will they be deported because they haven't left fast enough? The process is invasive and stressful - comprehensive health checks (even HIV!), bank checks, police checks, family trees, what have you. But there's nothing to compenstate for that.

9. The English language requirements completely disregard the degree. You need to score at least a 6 in your IELTS tests to qualify (the highest is 9, I got 8). The tests are only valid for 2 years, so the one you took to get to Australia to study in the first place likely won't be valid. The fact that you did an English language degree apparently doesn't mean anything to anyone. Also, if you scored pretty high on your first IELTS test, surely your English can't have deteriorated from living and studying in Australia? (I do feel that local Australians' command of the language leaves something to be desired, but that's another rant...)

Visas disgust me in general, but this especially makes me frustrated. So many vulnerable people - young people, arts and humanities, people living non-traditional lives - affected by stupid unrealistic policies. So many of us came to Australia because there were communities that supported us (I don't thinK I could do half the stuff that I do back in Malaysia). Yet, even though there are Australians who would welcome us with open arms, the Government doesn't seem to care.

You want to know why there are illegal migrants? Because things like these just show what a big sham the whole process is. Why bother putting yourself through the wringer if you're only going to end up worse than you are before?

Yet the only time the Australian public ever gets to know about things like these are when it affects someone from a developed, privileged country. Today Tonight or the Courier Mail will report about a British person that now doesn't have a visa and they make such a big deal about "how terrible!" it all is. But this is the reality for many migrants out there, especially from developing countries. Yet because we're not white, we don't get the press. We deserved it after all, filthy people fresh off the boats.

The Immigration policies definitely need a reform. However, they need a reform that is realistic, humanistic, and takes into account the real-world experiences of migrants and current job-seekers. At the very least, talk to migrants about what they experience. Don't just make up a whole bunch of rules, fail to keep up with them, and then just say "Ooops, we're sorry you're disappointed."

[Add your comment] [6]

Earthquakes, news reports, and human nature

Ever since news of the Haiti earthquake broke out, I've heard quite a few people - friends, acquaintances, reblogs - grumble about how their local media seems to only care about the people of their country that were affected. Australian press talks about the 2 Brisbane-based aid workers who were injured and rescued; the American press talks about the Americans; and so on.

There are THOUSANDS of Haitians dead! they cry. But no one cares about them! Not the media! They often say it so smugly, as though the supposedly-amorphous "media" is beneath them and they're so much better for thinking about the Haitians.

They seem to forget, though, that this isn't a conspiracy on the part of the media - it's basic human nature.

One of the things that makes something news is relevancy. And something is relevant to us if it has something to do with our lives, our characters, our demographic. Since newspapers aren't often niche enough to cater to very specific needs, they choose items that are relevant based on broader categories - locations of their readership being one such factor.

Remember Dunbar's Number? The theory that our brain can only manage about 150 strong relationships at any one time? Same thing is happening here. Unless you're personally connected with Haiti in some way - Haitian friends, you've been there, you live very close to Haiti - Haiti is just an abstract concept. You could care about them as fellow human beings, have concern and empathy over their situation, but your brain can't really comprehend then as anything more than that.

The people that you care about, that are within your Dunbar circle of 150, are relevant to you in some way. Family, lovers, close friends, regular social circles, education, work; you interact with them enough that you know something about their life and they know something about yours. They're familiar. And one of the traits that makes someone more likely to be familiar is their location. You're more likely to be familiar with someone if they live close to you than if they live far away. (The Internet does make it very easy to make more friends online but foreign than with your neighbours, but they're "close" in spirit and contact, easy to reach.)

The mainstream media publishes all sorts of major disasters every day. Airplane crashes, earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, what have you. People die in the hundreds and thousands. Infrastructure collapses. Bangladesh gets flooded so often that my parents aren't so fazed when they hear the news of another "disastrous" flood - compared to foreign friends who freak out on our behalf.

So much of this happens so often that it can be hard to process. If we deeply evaluated every disaster we wouldn't get out of the house out of gloom or fear. We can only deal with so much. So we take the things that are relevant, and put aside the rest. Aware that it exists, but unable or unwilling to do much more than that. Even donating money is an effort.

News reporters know this. They know that the only way to have people care is to put a face on the issue. Make it less about statistics and details, and more about the heart and spirit of the story. And one effective way to do this is to report on anyone local that may have been involved - whether as victim, lucky survivor, expert, assistance.

The local people they pick, like the Brisbane aid workers in Haiti, they could be your friends. Your siblings. Your colleagues. Your teachers. Your lovers. You could have met them on the bus, you could have sold them a cup of coffee, you could have asked them for directions. Heck, that person trapped in the earthquake could have been you.

When the Twin Towers first fell on September 11th, the only thing that got me to really realise the severity of the situation was a report on CNN on a bomb threat to the Petronas Twin Towers in KL. (It was a hoax, thankfully.) I was most concerned about my Channel [V] friends, especially Asha who was travelling on a plane that day; my family tracked down some family friends living in New York. Later on we learnt from the Savage Garden fanboards that Darren Hayes had narrowly missed being on one of the crashed planes; most of us freaked out.
When the tsunami hit on Boxing Day 2004 I spent the day trying to get in touch with my friends in Penang and Indonesia (they were all fine, though I didn't hear from one last person till the end of the night and got scared).
My sister and her now-husband called us from London on July 7th 2005 to tell us they were OK - just before we checked out the news to find out that the Tube and some double decker buses were bombed. The rest of the day i looked out for Asha's London-based sister (she was found safe) and sighed with relief when a close relative mentioned he'd just barely missed one of the bombed trains.

It's not that we don't care about all the other disasters in the world. It's just that we can only care so much. Sometimes it takes the involvement of someone or something close to us to make us aware of the situation, of the mess and the pain and the importance of reaching out. That's what the mainstream media is tapping into - writing up stories of people like us, people we may have known, people who could have been us.

It's part "this could have been you", part "they were one of us". It's only natural to look out for your kind. It doesn't make you racist or prejudicial - just human.

The mainstream media - both as a collective and within individual presses - have quite a few areas that need improvement and deserve scrutiny. Working by human nature isn't one of them - especially not by people who themselves wouldn't have thought about Haiti or any other disaster-prone area until their name showed up as a Twitter hashtag.

Volunteering overseas - would you really be useful?

A lot of people - especially young somewhat-socially-aware people looking for Gap Year work - are really big on volunteering overseas. This especially comes up during times of international crises or natural disasters, such as the recent earthquakes on Haiti. Everyone wants to help, and they feel that actually working there and giving a spare pare of hands would be more useful than giving money, which feels impersonal.

However, as this Ask MetaFilter thread shows, volunteering from overseas can be very counterproductive if the volunteer doesn't come with significant experience and expertise. It is expensive to host a volunteer - food, shelter, insurance, travel, etc - and many volunteers aren't able to deal with the sheer amount of effort and will that is required for the disaster area. Also, there have been plenty of bad experiences of underresourced locals having to deal with well-meaning foreigners who can't cope with cultural change.

What can you do then? Donate to organisations that already have people there - money is a lot more useful than things, as it won't spoil and will be made useful quickly. Volunteer your time locally, even if it means doing grunt, non-glamourous work like handling phonecalls or folding letters - they still need to be done. Work on long-term projects that deal with the bigger issues that make things like Haiti's earthquake such a mess - poverty, water access, corruption.

Here are some choice comments from that thread that should be mandatory reading for anyone wanting to volunteer overseas.

Sidhedevil:

The unemployment rate in Haiti before the quake was something like 75%. Any Haitian adult who can physically be of assistance to their fellow Haitians is going to be a lot more use to others--and benefit a lot more by having paid work--than an untrained foreigner.

If your friend has specific skills in health care, construction, civil engineering, or public infrastructure maintenance, her professional organizations will have information on volunteer efforts. If your friend is just a nice person who wants to help, she will do better by staying where she is and organizing fund drives and blood drives.

CIDI Statement for volunteering on disaster relief:

Volunteers without prior disaster relief experience are generally not selected for relief assignments. Candidates with the greatest chance of being selected have fluency in the language of the disaster-stricken area, prior disaster relief experience, and expertise in technical fields such as medicine, communications logistics, water/sanitation engineering. In many cases, these professionals are already available in-country. Most agencies will require at least ten years of experience, as well as several years of experience working overseas. It is not unusual to request that volunteers make a commitment to spend at least three months working on a particular disaster. Most offers of another body to drive trucks, set up tents, and feed children are not accepted. Keep in mind that once a relief agency accepts a volunteer, they are responsible for the volunteer's well-being - i.e., food, shelter, health and security. Resources are strained during a disaster, and another person without the necessary technical skills and experience can often be a considerable burden to an ongoing relief effort.

Forktine:

The comments above about untrained warm bodies not being needed right now are true. However, those willing-but-unskilled people will be desperately needed a year from now, when the sexy news teams have gone home and the world's focus is somewhere else. Haiti will be recovering from this disaster for decades to come -- your friend could play a tremendously important role in some piece of that recovery.

Right now, however, Haiti needs self-contained field hospitals, search and rescue teams with heavy equipment, and the kind of large water desalination equipment carried by military hospital ships. Send money today, and make plans to go and help with long term recovery when Haiti recovers to a point where a volunteer won't be siphoning resources from the people most affected.

Nothing... and like it:

I'd like to echo what others have said above re: untrained, unskilled volunteers. When I went through disaster relief training with the Red Cross in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, they were very explicit that neither they nor any other reputable relief organizations were in the habit of deploying volunteers who didn't have extensive training and applicable skills in the various areas of disaster relief, even for domestic relief.

For international incidents, they are even more stringent; they generally only deploy people internationally with training, skills AND EXTENSIVE DISASTER RELIEF EXPERIENCE. For areas where the native language is not English, they also require some ability in the native language. I was led to understand that this is the case for all reputable relief agencies, especially for those which respond in the immediate wake of disasters.

As forktine mentions, Haiti will need assistance for a long time to come. Your friend could get the relevant training now, and be able to help in the future. This is similar to the route that I took after Katrina, which ended in my doing family service case work for the Red Cross in southern Mississippi a couple of months later, when people were still recovering from the effects of the hurricane. In case it's helpful, here's what I did:

Katrina hit while I was unemployed (and too broke to donate any money) in the Pacific Northwest. I spent the first 24 hours or so after the disaster sitting on my couch gorging on disaster porn on CNN muttering to myself that "someone should do something." Duh. I'm a somebody. I can do a something.

The phone lines at my local Red Cross chapter were jammed when I called, so I said "fuck it" went down to the office. I walked in and it was pretty chaotic, so I just walked up to someone wearing an ID that said "Volunteer Coordinator" and said "Hey, what can I do to help right now?"

They had set up a phone bank in an unused conference room and desperately needed people to answer phones and process donations and volunteer applications, so that's what I did, full time, for about a week. Most of the people who called in were like your friend. They just wanted to go where the action was. When I suggested that they could help at the local chapter, they often scoffed and hung up on me.

But I was there, every day, helping the Volunteer Coordinator process the massive influx of people and paperwork, so when the chapter set up fast-track disaster-relief training classes (Shelter Operations, Mass Feeding, Family Services/Case Work, etc.) she was able to get me into those classes.

After the classes I went back to helping out in the Volunteer Coordinator office for another month or so of paperwork, filing, and phonebanking. Now some of the calls were actually angry: "I gave you my name a month ago. Why can't I go to New Orleans yet? What the hell is wrong with you people?" After another couple of weeks of that, the volunteer coordinator pulled me aside and said, basically "Thank you so much for helping me out when I was so swamped. Are you still available for deployment?"

Less than 72 hours later I was sitting on couches and front porches in Mississippi, helping some very nice and very devastated people fill out paperwork, giving them useful phone numbers like state insurance regulatory agency's hotline (don't fucking get me started on the absolute scumbag insurance adjustors who had been spending weeks just absolutely ASSFUCKING some of these poor folks), providing them with additional relief fund debit cards, etc.

So the takeway from this should be, really, that the best way to help RIGHT NOW (if financial support isn't possible for whatever reason) is to go down to a local chapter of a relief agency who has people in the field right now and help them. Do whatever they need. They're stretched to the brink organizationally and administratively right now and they need all the help they can get. This also puts your friend in a position where she can gain some relevant experience and training, not to mention making herself known to the agency as someone who is willing to do the shitty unglamorous grunt work. This will be to her advantage in the future if she wants to do some of the less shitty and unglamorous grunt work. (Which, by the way, is much less glamorous than she is probably imagining right now.)

range:

My wife has done development work in Haiti for years, and we have friends there now who are capable, trained engineers doing field work. We're lobbying like mad to get them to come home and fight their extremely noble impulse to stay and help. Unless you have specific training in disaster relief work, you're going to be a danger to yourself -- this is especially true in Port au Prince, where we're already getting reports of increased violent crime (increased above the "normal," very high level). When you get hurt, you'll end up using resources that were supposed to go to Haitians. That's why you should send money, and not accidentally add yourself to the number of wounded.

Dee Xtrovert:

We had such people show up in Sarajevo, during the war. They were - to a person - a great drag on life there for those of us without the ability to leave. Imagine this - the war means all utilities are gone. No gas, water, electricity, phone service, etc. Constant shelling means that a great percentage of living quarters are no longer habitable. Lack of easy access to the city means basic food and medical supplies cannot easily (or at all) find their way into town. In short, Sarajevo's people are cold, dirty, miserably unhappy, starving, uncomfortable, sick, tired, homeless and psychologically drained.

But, above all else, most Sarajevans are hospitable and kind and have some class. So what happens when a good-hearted but idiotic "volunteer" shows up to "help?" My mahala (neighborhood) hosted some of these people, and I can tell you.

1) That person displaces someone else from a little corner of habitation and a humble little sleeping spot. In this way, they were a burden to us.

2) Those of us who'd been living through the war were accustomed to daily struggles. For instance, access to water necessitated a long nightmare of pushing a crude cart up and down steep cobble-stoned hills and across a river, in order to fill whatever one could with water. And then back again. Aside from being a torturous chore, this meant continual exposure to "open" areas where snipers would attempt to kill you. In my case, it meant revisiting the place where my parents were killed while waiting in line. This trip was also a tremendous expenditure of valuable calories.

We Sarajevans knew all this. Consequently, we went to the bathroom once daily (if that), because every time you had to flush the toilet, you were that much closer to having to make the water trek again. Our "heroic" visitors showed no such discretion. They often expected baths! (By way of comparison, I cleaned myself in the river.) Nor were the heroic visitors there to do something as "mundane" as spending half the day collecting water. So we made more frequent soul-crushing and scary trips. In this way, they were a burden to us.

3) Of course, they wanted to stay for months but brought food only for a couple of days. They didn't have rights to Sarajevo's meek rations (as they were not in the city by force), so we shared ours with them. They complained about the food - what we'd been eating for months or years with gratitude - and occasionally would spend some of their cash for black market goods, which they'd hoard for themselves. Then complain about the cost. They were an embarrassment to us. In this way, they were a burden to us.

4) Most of them did not know the history of our country or city or culture. They never knew the language. Frequently, we would scurry around the neighborhood to find someone who could translate Serbo-Croatian and English / French / German / whatever, just so heroic visitors could achieve some basic communication. I remember one fellow, who announced to the neighborhood a deal he'd "negotiated" with the Serbs (who were blockading the city) to feed us. Instinctively, we laughed, though some (irrationally) got their hopes up. The "plan" he worked out was that we would walk to Pale (a suburb held by the Serbs) where they would "give us everything we needed." A fair analogy here would be the Nazis telling the Jews that they'd get "everything they needed" in the ovens at Auschwitz. The stupidity of this heroic visitor only depressed us further, as did other schemes and ideas devised by heroic visitors with no experience, sense or knowledge. In this way, they were a burden to us.

The only things I (or anyone I ever knew) received from these sorts of people were the occasional article of clothing, or a weird treat like a chocolate bar. I was grateful for them, but a check to a helpful charitable agency would have been better.

Bear in mind, we adapted to the war over time. So we had an ability to "absorb" these unskilled morons with some amount of grace and humor. In the beginning, we all thought that - at the very least - these heroic visitors would go home and act as witnesses for what we were enduring. Later, we doubted this was so. I was once reunited with a self-described "freelance journalist" (no credentials, never sold a story) in America, who bragged to his friends about what he'd done for us (which was . . . nothing), and how much the trip had cost him, which was plenty. How I wish he'd spent his time and energy helping to raise funds for us, or simply educating others, or - most of all, just writing a check to the Red Crescent or a similar agency.

What just happened in Haiti was immediate. And they died so quickly - more than died in Sarajevo, and in a single day. These people cannot possibly have adapted to the "new" conditions there as we did in Sarajevo - they haven't had the time. Believe me, their problem isn't a lack of manpower (aside from those with very specific, high-level skills) - these disasters leave plenty of people with nothing else to do but try to help others. So, as much of a burden as unskilled helpers were in Sarajevo, they'd be a much, much greater burden right now in Haiti.

Everytime I see news of a large-scale disaster such as this, I have panic attacks. I know the desperation of the situation, how much help is needed right away. I speak French and even know a few Creole phrases. I have emergency medical treatment and gave aid to Bosnians injured and sick in wartime, under difficult conditions. I've got weeks of vacation time, money in the bank and a longing to help. My sympathy with these poor Haitians is boundless; I've experienced a lot of what they have, and will. So I imagine I'd be a fairly qualified volunteer, with a temperment founded in personal experience and a history of dealing with all the sights and smells of death and misery.

Will I go? Absolutely not. I'd like to; it was my first impulse. But I'd be a burden to someone there, somehow. And Haiti doesn't need even a tiny new burden. So . . . I wrote the biggest check I could afford. I'll save more lives with a shipment of shovels or some treatment for clean water or some powdered milk than I would spending twice as much going there. It's just simple mathematics.

Tell your friend to write a check. Please.

And forktine's right. Haiti's never really been in great shape. It's going to need you more in a year than it will now. So your friend can write a check today, then save up and go back in a year or two, when she will be a true hero. And that way, everyone wins.

dhartung:

The thing is, this recession is creating a lot of people like you -- smart, but idle. It would be great if all that ability could be harnessed the way the WPA and other programs did during the last job trough of this magnitude. But I don't think running down to Haiti mid-crisis is the way to do it. It's taken a while for NGOs to get people to start thinking in terms of giving money instead of, say, canned goods or blankets -- which are hideously expensive to ship to a disaster zone, and often replaceable at much lower cost in country. Giving the Red Cross a blanket and asking them to ship it to Bumfuqua is actually giving the Red Cross a burden and using money that could perhaps buy 2, 5, 10 or 20 blankets instead. Think of your desire to donate labor in these terms and you'll agree with Dee Xtrovert more easily.

* You're a body who needs to be flown to Haiti somehow.
* You're taking up a seat on a plane that could be held by a person with expertise.
* You're taking up weight that could haul food.
* You're taking up money that could buy food.
* You're taking up -- in aggregate -- landing slots that could be used by other planes, that themselves could be carrying supplies or water or food or experts.
* You're burdening a broken air traffic system that needs to be jury-rigged using battlefield equipment.
And that's even before you've deplaned. Once you're there, you're a body that needs to be fed and kept dry, in a country where there are perhaps millions with the precise same need.
* If you replace a local worker, you will have greater needs than that local worker: cleaner water, better food. You can't live on what they routinely survive on, I guarantee it.
* If you replace a local worker, you may be depriving that local worker of a wage that could support a family.
In the end, you'll eventually become someone who needs to go home. Perhaps then you'll be taking up a seat that could be used by someone needing medical care in the states. And so on.

I really urge you to think long-term. Is this something you really want to do with the rest of your life? Then follow Nothing's advice. Is this just a way for you to fight feeling useless? There are a million ways you can fight that staying home. Volunteer at a homeless shelter. Help the humane society trap, neuter and release strays. And so on.

humannaire:

As you are presently unemployed and perhaps in search of direction, I recommend you seek out an agency you see giving help and work to help coordinate ground support from your present location and community. There is where your work will do the most good.

Where you live, you have infrastructure you can re-program and re-route to brilliantly switch on and consciously turn into an assistance network.

Align yourself with reputable peers, preferably people who are experienced and committed. There is no need to build something new yet. After you have some hard-earned credibility and time in, you may see something the rest of us are missing. Then perhaps we will follow you.

Helping others as a life-direction and also as a career is immensely satisfying and rewarding. This is an amazing opportunity to explore this direction. As the challenges such work brings inspire personal growth in ways that are literally indescribable, I wish you well.

As for insight, I have a program where I collect, repair, ship, and re-purpose discarded computers for Jamaica. I have been doing this successfully for two years. The program I created (and personally fund) has enjoyed success that I won't go into here.

But I would not have been able to pull it off without incredible friends who have life-long and generational roots in Jamaica. In fact, were it not for the facts that I was 1) invited, 2) escorted, and 3) bringing and giving without strings or expense, my presence would have been unwelcome. People have their own lives, their own dignity, and their own world. People appearing unannounced and empty-handed, no matter the intention or occasion, are not well-received anywhere. Well, maybe somewhere, but not somewhere I know of.

One other insight. Based on the success of the one program in Jamaica (I got lucky), I attracted the attention of others who invited me to do the same for a school in Haiti. Feeling confident based on the one success, I agreed. Somehow it turned out that I was to be taken to Gonaives. It is no place I would have been welcome or safe. It was only through the intervention of a number of friends of mine of Haitian descent, that I staved off this disaster. You see, the likelihood is high that unintentionally or intentionally I was being taken.

This is the danger of going off with good intent but without connection or means to some other place that is far removed from our experience and understanding.

I encourage you to help. I also encourage you to (presently) do so from where you are.

Moral of the story: think about how useful you would *really* be to the country - the country's not there to satisfy your need to feel useful.