On June 19, in Meizhou, Guangdong, landslides and waterlogging occurred in some areas of Meizhou due to heavy rainfall.
Since the heavy rain in Meizhou on June 16, many provinces in the south have been facing the test of heavy rainfall in the past 10 days.
While the relief efforts continued, a number of issues also surfaced. On social media, many people mentioned that the attention of the disaster did not match its severity, "there are too few hot searches, and there are few social donations".
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, most non-profit organizations took a wait-and-see attitude. So far, the number of foundations that have responded has been inadequate. As the disaster continues to spread, the relief effort has become a war of attrition, testing the patience, determination and capacity of all parties.
Red alert, rescue team continues to be depleted
On June 24, the Central Meteorological Observatory upgraded and issued a national-level red warning for heavy rain. This is the third red warning for heavy rain since the Central Meteorological Observatory launched the warning issuance mechanism in 2010.
The impact of this round of rain disasters includes Guangdong, Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou, Anhui, Zhejiang, Hubei and Hunan, and half of China is at risk of flooding.
The disaster has spread widely and changed rapidly, which makes the rescue team face the test of continuous consumption of manpower, funds and rescue equipment. The National Shuguang Rescue Alliance (hereinafter referred to as the Shuguang Rescue Team), after responding to the disaster in Longyan, Fujian, went to Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province again to carry out rescue work, and at the same time prepared for Anhui. Under the cross-provincial dispatch and long-term support, the funding gap of the team is becoming more and more obvious.
In the hardest-hit areas of Jingdezhen, floodwaters reached 1.5 meters high, and some village buildings were already half submerged. On June 24 and 25, the Shuguang rescue team sent a team of about 100 people to Jingdezhen and brought 20 kayaks, but the cost of the journey became a problem. "The Foundation was only able to pay for two cars and eight people. There's no way around it. Wang Gang, commander of the Shuguang rescue team, said helplessly.
Wang Gang also told China Philanthropist about other difficulties on the front line: "Now I can only ask the brothers to pay in advance, and then look for me, and I try to find resources. At present, in Jiangxi, the team does not dare to stay in a hotel, but sets up tents in a warehouse. In order to save money, we opened three rooms in the hotel and everyone took turns to take a shower. ”
Wang Gang showed reporters photos of warehouses and tents, one with two rows of about 20 dark blue marching beds. It is under such conditions that the team still sticks to the front line of rescue, delivering supplies and transferring villagers.
The temporary residence of the Shuguang rescue team in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province. Photo / provided by the interviewee
Donations are cold and funds are in short supply
In response to this round of floods in southern China, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Emergency Management pre-allocated 64 million yuan and 496 million yuan of central natural disaster relief funds to the disaster areas on June 19 and 26 to support the disaster relief work.
In addition to government-level disaster relief initiatives, the involvement of social actors is also crucial. Tencent, Alibaba, and Byte have responded positively, on the one hand, actively pushing flood-related fundraising projects on their own Internet fundraising platforms, and on the other hand, actively cooperating with emergency management departments and foundations to donate money and materials to the disaster areas.
Overall, however, there has been a marked decline in corporate donations. According to incomplete statistics from the Philanthropy Times, 72 enterprises participated in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei floods, with a total donation of more than 1 billion yuan. Most of the donors for this flood are local enterprises in Fujian and Guangdong, as well as local chambers of commerce and government agencies. The Meizhou Federation of Industry and Commerce announced that the amount of donations received was about 23 million yuan, while the Longyan Municipal Civilization Committee only announced the list of caring enterprises, but did not announce the specific amount.
In the past disaster relief operations, many stars in the entertainment industry took the lead in participating, took the initiative to call for social attention, and played a good leading role. But this year, show business has become relatively quiet. The China Siyuan Engineering Foundation, which has rich experience in the field of celebrity public welfare and is affiliated with public welfare charity funds such as Bazaar and Huayi Brothers, has not yet taken the initiative to speak out or cooperate with the flood project.
On June 19, more than 40 rescuers were dispatched to the disaster area under the long-term disaster relief project "Sail Now" of Siyuan and Sina Yangfan. Another project for post-disaster reconstruction, the Battle Flag Project, is also on the ground to investigate the disaster situation and assess needs. As of noon on June 28, less than 20,000 yuan had been donated to Tencent Charity and less than 30,000 yuan to the Battle Flag Project, and the total number of fundraisers for the two projects was less than 5,000. The fundraising amount of "Sail Now" in micro public welfare exceeded 150,000 yuan, but there was still a big gap from the fundraising target of 1 million yuan set by the project.
Although the disaster is far from over and fundraising is ongoing, public welfare organizations are generally not optimistic about the public fundraising situation this time. The Beijing Yuanmeng Public Welfare Foundation, which also participated in the rescue response and arrived on the front line on June 17, told China Philanthropist that the Internet fundraising amount for the rescue project was just over 300,000 yuan, and the final Internet fundraising amount of the foundation was about 7 million yuan during the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei flood last year.
"[The amount of public fundraising] is really a little bit less. Recently, disasters have occurred frequently, including floods, which have gradually become the norm of news, and the public is a little tired of donations, and the response is not so positive. For all foundations, the amount of basic donations is declining. Wang Han, head of the emergency rescue project of the Yuanmeng Foundation, told "Chinese Philanthropist".
One Foundation, which has been investing in the field of disaster relief and public welfare for a long time, has also felt this "donation fatigue". "At the time of the flood in Henan, it was more than 100 million, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region was about 30 million, and this time it may be a few million." Wei Mingtao, assistant secretary general of One Foundation, told China Philanthropist.
The floods involved multiple cities, counties and townships in multiple provinces, and the relatively unfocused media coverage and more distracted public attention may have been an important reason for the decline in public fundraising. In the future, extreme weather will become more frequent and normalized, and problems such as "disaster fatigue" and "donation fatigue" will become more prominent, which is a challenge for the disaster relief system of the whole society.
"Our partner agencies can't afford to give up donor education, but they also need to adapt to that. From the perspective of resource mobilization, we need to rethink the prioritization of the situation and re-examine the perception of disasters and their impacts. In a recent interview with the China Foundation Development Forum, Xu Shiling, a lecturer at the International College of the Red Cross at Soochow University and co-founder of Zhuo Ming Trust Aid, said, "It can be a painful process to re-prioritize work within limited resources, and it is also different from the previous response model. On the other hand, we also need to seriously discuss how to be more efficient and effective...... In the face of a shortage of funds, we need to consider more cost-effective methods. ”
On June 20, in Guilin, Guangxi, fire and rescue personnel carefully picked up a month-old baby in Maozhou.
How to be sustainable
"Chinese Philanthropist" roughly sorted out the foundations that invested in the disaster relief work, including the China Rural Development Foundation, One Foundation, Yuanmeng Foundation and Amity Foundation, followed by Wuxi Lingshan Charity Foundation, China Social Aid Foundation, Pinglan Foundation, Beijing Leyu Foundation, China Siyuan Project Foundation, China Red Cross Foundation, etc.
They are all foundations that have a certain accumulation in the construction of emergency response networks. Taking One Foundation as an example, in 2009, the agency launched the One Foundation Rescue Alliance project, which is composed of non-governmental rescue teams; In 2011, it began to support the disaster relief capacity building of social organizations covering nearly 1,000 families in more than 20 provinces, and launched joint disaster relief projects. In 2014, it joined hands with some enterprises to launch its own enterprise joint disaster relief platform.
For One Foundation's disaster relief system, long-term corporate partners are very important. In the case of unsatisfactory fundraising, how to maintain a sustainable relationship with the enterprise is a very critical issue.
In 2012, One Foundation partnered with Coca-Cola China to launch the "Clean Water Project", which aims to improve the healthy drinking water of children in rural areas. In the second year of the project, when there was a sudden earthquake in Lushan, Ya'an, Sichuan, the project could be used to build an emergency drinking water rescue mechanism.
Another project, "Disaster Delivery", was born in August 2014 in response to the Ludian earthquake. Logistics on the front lines of disaster areas has always been a difficult problem to solve, and many drivers are reluctant to run to the front line of disaster areas, worrying about personal safety or being trapped in the disaster area, which will affect their income. At that time, Sinotrans Logistics and China Merchants Charity Foundation found One Foundation and took out their own warehouses, logistics vehicles, and logistics conveyor chains, which quickly filled part of the logistics gap. This project has been in operation for 10 years, and it has responded to the disaster as soon as possible.
In addition, in terms of ensuring the sustainability of disaster preparedness funds, One Foundation has signed a framework cooperation agreement with some enterprises, and after the funds in a cycle are used up, the enterprises will make up a new batch of funds for the disaster preparedness warehouse in accordance with the agreement.
"If you're only giving cash, it's going to be stressful. But if the enterprise can use its own industrial system, the cost will not be too high. Wei Mingtao told China Philanthropist, "It is a better way to combine the capabilities and resources of the enterprise itself to do some projects that combine with the needs of the disaster area." ”
Among the foundations that responded to the disaster, such as the China Rural Development Foundation and the Yuanmeng Foundation, they are also developing and improving their local partnerships to build a more mature disaster response network.
As for the civilian rescue teams, the funds directly delivered by the Foundation for them have become an important support for the rescue teams to continue to survive and fight.
Wang Gang revealed that the Shuguang rescue team is trying to launch a project to directly raise funds for the rescue team through the Internet platform, which can only be completed with the help of the foundation. He hopes that in the future, there will be a direct donation to solve the urgent needs of the brothers, so that they can go to the front line more efficiently and save more people from the disaster.
Author: Gong Yijie
Image source: Visual China
Photo editor: Zhang Xu
Duty Editor: Wan Xiaojun