blog post Appetite for Construction: Help Haiti

Hey Lisa and anyone else who happens to be reading. 

I'm working on a plan:

Canadians are giving alot of $ which is great - but it's also been a long recession and alot of people are out of work and don't have munch money. This is still Canada though - somewhere, tucked in a junk drawer or a file of receipts or somewhere most of Canada's 30 million people have some Canadian tire money tucked away. 

Canadian Tire has hardware (hammers, nails, shovels etc) they also have camp gear - tents, mosquito netting, water purification tablets, camp stoves, first aid kits, hand crank radios and flashlights ... 

So as soon as I can find a charity that is able to turn Canadian tire $ into stuff that's actually needed on the ground in Haiti and is capable of getting it there I'm going to start a collection and have people dig all of that Canadian tire money out of their junk drawers and send it in. 

I've contacted a few charities today, but it's a big day for them and no one has gotten back yet. If anyone wants to get involved give me a shout - most of you already know how but if not

beach.justin@gmail.com will work. 

I like the sentiment, but I wonder if your efforts are well placed. I think a better endeavour would be to get some kind of partnership with Canadian Tire so that any CT $'s donated to them get turned into some amount of cash. Similar to a link Jennifer Aikmann posted in Lana's thread about donating Airmiles. 200 airmiles = $25. Perphaps Canadian Tire could really generate some good karma by doing a matching campaign, ie. for every $1 of CT money donated, CT will give $2 to MSF, IRC or the like.

I would point you towards this.

The gist is that sending goods requires a lot more manpower to sort and direct to where it's needed than just getting cash to the charities who know what to do with it. Granted you are talking about goods that would be do some good, but I'd highlight this quote from the above link:

"After Hurricane Mitch in 1998, Honduras was flooded with shipments of donated goods. They clogged ports, overwhelmed military transport, and made it nearly impossible for relief agencies to ship in the things they really needed. Those donations did harm, not good. Expired drugs had to be carefully disposed of. Inappropriate donations had to be transported away and discarded. All of this wasted time and money"

And getting goods into Haiti is a nightmare right now. The country has 1 airport. The seaport still isn't accesible...We would want to make sure that we don't exacerbate that situation. Glad to see you thinking outside of the box though.

@Boders - that's why I'm trying to get in touch with charities and not just plunging ahead. The point is that there may be a few million untapped dollars out there if they need it (even if there are limits on what they can use it for.) If they don't need it, they'll tell me that. 

If the relief agencies (Red Cross, Oxfam etc) don't need it then I'll turn to someone like Right to Play. 

It's a great idea. I think the best way is through CT itself. I'd think they'd be happy to jump on board.

Yep, I emailed them first - we'll see what they say.

Gift cards are a harder sell. But at least with the people I know Canadian Tire money has become like pennies - people don't throw it out but they usually don't use it for anything either. 

keep us posted on what CT has to say. I trust that your blog will have updates...

Yeah, I know. If this happens I'm going to draft Tom. = )

off topic, but I'm just wondering..

in Grant's show earlier today he offered up some tickets to the PPP. I answered the question to win them. [142] I offered them to Alex as I had a prior commitment. He also had plans. As it turns out I can go to the PPP and my other engagment. I emailed Grant but assume he is already 7 beers into the evening. Does anyone know what happened with these tickets? IF they are still available I'd be more than happy to pick them up from the CBC building. And if they went to someone else, that's cool too..I'm just wondering.

Thanks very much! Any excuse to walk down to the CBC building is good by me, even if it's just into the lobby :P