Yolanda’s donors: Who, what, why?

EXACTLY three months after Yolanda struck central Philippines, the government launched a worldwide campaign to thank everyone who had rushed to the country’s aid in the super typhoon’s aftermath.

Print and TV ads, as well as billboards in nine famous cities across the globe – New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and Sydney – expressed the Filipinos’ gratitude for the hand extended to them by people all over the world.

Indeed, while Filipinos themselves rushed to help their countrymen in need, the global response to the tragedy was overwhelming.

The United Nations itself has monitored, through its Financial Tracking Service (FTS), a total of US$845 million (PhP37 billion) of Yolanda aid being raised and donated to the Philippines in the period between November 2013 and October 2014.

Some 22 percent of this amount came from private individuals and organizations. The rest came from various donor-countries.

The latter includes at least 58 foreign governments and the European Commission alone that, according to donor documents, have already given some PhP29.84 billion or US$667.5 million as of October 2014.

The UN said the donations were coursed through 120 operational relief agencies from within the UN system, the international components of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and some international non-governmental organizations (INGO) and faith-based groups.

To track the trail of aid in cash and in kind for Yolanda’s victims, PCIJ moved 188 letter requests for data and documents to a great majority of these donors. The letters included 117 sent to INGOs, NGOs, and private entities; 59 to donor countries and foreign embassies; and 12 to government agencies.

To be sure, a significant amount of the donations might have been reported twice or thrice; some donor agencies themselves had also served as conduits or channels of the donations.

In a number of cases, pledges were bundled with donations that had already been raised and disbursed.

In yet other cases, donor reports were not specific as to their intended beneficiaries (i.e. towns and cities, number of persons, etc.), or even what the general purposes of the funds mean in terms of actual goods and services (i.e. “child protection” or “Water, Sanitation, and Health Services or WASH”).

The database that PCIJ has organized for all the reported numbers and information is a massive file with 53 columns and 994 rows of 14,310 cells or data entries — for the donors alone.

Meanwhile, the database for the PhP52.06 billion in public funds that the Philippine government said had been disbursed for Yolanda’s victims, a year after the disaster struck, is another matter altogether. This second database consists of 26 columns and 780 rows of 15,629 cells or data entries.

Combined, the two databases come up to 79 columns and 1,774 rows of 29,939 cells or data entires.

Yet still, the PCIJ has launched only a seminal effort at retracing the money trail of Yolanda and other recent disasters. Because such funds could spell relief, rescue, and survival for families and communities, integrity and efficiency in their use and release have become a common concern of citizens, public officials, and donor agencies.

The latest PCIj stories for Disaster Aid: The Money Trail follow:

* Yolanda’s donors: Who, what, why, how much?
* Tacloban: Disaster & politics a bad mix
* Relief protocols and rules

For the full data tables, as well as related video, photos, and documents, check out Diaster Aid: The Money Trail.