[Olpc-Haiti] voluntourist gets Haiti's sheit done [unlike Madonna's abandoned Malawi school!]

[Holt]

NY Times excerpts:

When accepting a humanitarian award in Los Angeles last October, [Sean 
Penn] summed up his managerial style as “vitriol” and “bossiness.” His 
[Haiti] staff does not rush to disagree with the characterization...Much 
of the way he conducts himself as a leader has been defined by his 
intense opposition to “the gigantic boys’ network” of the other NGO's, 
“Sustainability! It’s the ultimate cliché — and the ultimate excuse for 
NGO’s that just want to move on to the next trendy, fundable 
job...[I'll] end up shot in the back of the head, but it won’t be by a 
Haitian, it will be by another NGO”

[But] “What surprised me the most about [Sean Penn],” says Lt. Gen. P. 
K. “Ken” Keen, military deputy commander of the U.S. Southern Command, 
“was how he went about learning the humanitarian assistance business. 
There was no ‘how-to’ book for that. You want to get stuff through the 
transportation networks? You want to get stuff out of the warehouses? 
You want to collaborate with the U.N.? How do you do all that? He was 
always willing to listen, learn and work with everyone.”

“Sean’s politics and mine are completely opposed,” says [Haiti’s largest 
U.S. investor, Comcel founder/CEO Brad Horwitz]. “His go left. Mine go 
right. But politics are kind of irrelevant in this. Comcel can only pick 
so many horses to back, and J/P HRO have shown real staying power. He’s 
been very good at figuring out and managing relationships. He’s also 
been extraordinarily efficient in using the resources he gets. I know if 
I provide J/P HRO with stuff, it won’t get wasted.”

Penn’s combination of hostility and principled fraternal feeling makes 
for a very odd, angry sort of philanthropy. It is probably not a sort 
that is massively appealing to the American public. As a rule, we prefer 
it when our celebrity philanthropists make us feel warm and sweet about 
giving...He is never going to have the creamy charm of a George Clooney 
or the unflappable good spirits of a Brad Pitt. But it is quite possible 
that he will end up doing more palpable good.

The story of the last 14 months in Haiti has been, by and large, a 
disheartening one. Less than half of the $5.8 billion pledged for 
recovery has been dispersed (and much of that has gone toward debt 
relief). Rubble still fills the streets of Port-au-Prince. Of the 1.5 
million Haitians left homeless by the quake, half still live in camps. 
But in an international relief effort characterized largely by paralysis 
and dysfunction, J/P HRO stands out as one of the rare success stories. 
By begging and borrowing, schmoozing and shouting, Penn has managed to 
build one of the most efficient aid outfits working in Haiti today...J/P 
HRO’s overhead is a modest 3.2 percent of donor funds. Permanent 
international staff routinely work 18-hour days... “Haiti is a foxhole, 
and we’re all in it,” [Penn] shrugged.

IN FULL: 
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/the-accidental-activist

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