There are things people may not aware of when planning a disaster relief effort. People tend to think about what needed at the current time, and supply it fast. While this is not wrong at all during the emergency phase of the disaster relief effort, a continues supply action and not deeply planned relief could lead to victims addiction of help from other people. Thus, weaken the power of the victims to survive on their own.
You may think it’s just to cruel to let the victims to survive on their own. Nope, we won’t dump them and leave them dying. You got it all wrong. Surviving here means to let them play their own game. We gave them the ball and coach them to win the World Soccer champhionship. Making disaster victims able to survive on their own is very crucial. It’s obvious that they are not a lab object of which we can attach sensors and monitor them 24/7. That’s just way it’s more make sense to have them capable of handling their own 24/7 game of life.
Wait a second, I’m not finished yet. Stay put. There area other thing beside individual resistence or the power to survive. Since this is an online realtime MMO game of life, there will be interaction between players. Surviving power would be stable and even increase when there are cooperations between player. Surviving all alone in a Warcraft III game with four enemies surrounding us would be hard for sure (let’s ignored that l33t gamer :p), let alone defeating all four by ourself.
Cash for Work
I’m sure some of you have heard it somewhere. It’s a system which will give some sort of reward (cash in this case) for a work. Cash for Work, Work for Cash, what differs between the two? I’d say the will and the goal. The former term is supposed to realte with volunteer will which give cash as an extra benefit. While work for cash is obvious that the only will exist is the will and goal to obtain the money by doing a work.
Sounds good. It can be implemented in a disaster are to provide legitimate money for the poor. Well, I would say yes, if only there has been a balance in the ecosystem. However, it’s often that there’s not enough balance yet in any short time after a disaster. Every aspect of the society may have collapsed thus left only a little area of interactivity between society member. So, how could the society returns to its former shape before the disaster?
Bond, Local Wisdom
Every aspect of the society can be teared down and crumbled, but there’s might be one thing stand up still. Local bond, brotherhood, and other local wisdom. What’s local wisdom? Local wisdom could be explained as any potential local culture that can be used to achieve prosperity.
What do you think capable of making the victims survive so far? Who takes the injured to the “hospital” in the first place? It’s the fellow victim. Who helped each other to build temporary shelter? Fellow victims. The aids come later are also real form of (hopefully) bond and humanity, but society survival really depends on theirself with or without aids from society outer world.
From this point you’ve should be able to guess what’s the red line. Yes, cash for work will definitely reduce bonds and other local wisdoms. And that’s just where you’ll eb able to see our society crumble down, shattered to pieces even worse than what caused by the disaster.
More on local wisdom and cash for work on Rony’s blog