Whenever a disaster strikes, thousands of people in countries all over the world start contacting various organizations and posting to online groups in an effort to try to volunteer onsite at the disaster site.

But what most of these people don’t realize is that spontaneous volunteers without the specific, high-level training and expertise that’s actually needed in the area, no affiliation with a credible agency and no local language skills can actually cause more problems than they alleviate in a disaster situation. The priority in these situations is helping the people affected by the disaster, NOT diverting resources to house, transport and otherwise take care of outsiders. In many of these situations, there is NO food, shelter or services to spare for outside volunteers. Volunteers coming into post-disaster areas have to be absolutely self-sustaining for days, even weeks, bringing in all of their own food and shelter. No shelter or safety measures can be provided to volunteers by the government or local people in many of these situations.

Japan and Haiti are incredibly complicated situations that require people with a very high degree of qualifications and long-term commitment, not just good will, a sense of urgency and short-term availability. These volunteers need to be extensively vetted, to ensure not only that they have the proper training and emotional stability to handle a post-crisis, low infrastructure situation, but also, to ensure they aren’t there to take advantage of unattended houses and shops, or even to exploit disaster victims.

Also, more and more agencies are hiring local people themselves, even immediately after a disaster, to clean rubble, remove dead bodies, build temporary housing, rebuild homes and essential buildings, and prepare and distribute food. Hiring and coordinating local people to do these activities themselves, rather than bringing people in from the outside, helps stabilize local people’s lives much more quickly!

People outside of disaster zones also start gathering supplies from family, neighbors and co-workers, envisioning themselves packing up the boxes of supplies and some organization somewhere paying to ship those boxes to post-disaster zones. But it is so much cheaper and more efficient for response agencies to buy and ship these items from areas that are MUCH closer to an affected area that most (all?) refuse these items. Plus, it’s better for relief agencies to buy clothing, shoes, medicine, toiletries, etc. new, or to accept donations in bulk directly from manufacturers and retailers, rather than going through donations made by countless numbers of individuals, which are filled with inappropriate items.

What to do with all these people calling your agency or posting to online groups saying, “I took a First Aid class a few years ago – how can I go to Japan and help?!?” Explain to them why they won’t be going, and strongly encourage them to get training now for possible disasters in their own geographic area instead. I direct people to the Red Cross, telling them that it will take at least a year to go through all of the training provided, and if they aren’t ready to make that training commitment, they aren’t ready to be a volunteer in disaster zones. Volunteering with an organization that helps people locally in other kinds of crisis situations — a domestic violence shelter, a suicide hotline, a crisis center, etc. is also excellent training that is valued by those mobilizing post-disaster volunteers.

Here is what aid agencies are doing in Japan. I also direct people to these agencies to donate financially.

Also see this article on DIY volunteers in Haiti.

The numbers for my page Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters are through the roof. Because this is one of the pages I have monatized, I’ll be donating all of the ad revenue generated for March by this page to the American Red Cross.

Also see this essay: Why Waiting to Give to Japan is a Good Idea.