Remember Haiti? The earthquake? How the world discovered more than 550 years after Columbus this small poor island in the Caribbean and rallied to help those poor people who had been forgotten by the world until the earthquake hit?

I know a charity that offered services to the Haitians that were never used and that were (probably) of no use to them. But the disaster of the earthquake put this charity on the map, made it known world-wide and allowed it to recruit hundreds of volunteers, not to mention the fundraising it made possible.

Disasters make charities. Nothing wrong with that, really, unless it’s done in that pretty cynical way I witnessed in the case just described.

On the other hand, there are true disasters happening all the time, every day, and they are not even on our radar.

There are people who are struggling along, working really hard every day until they are absolutely and completely exhausted – and who are ignored and left behind because there is no lobby, and they don’t hit the headlines.

Tactics, cynicism is not their style.

Which, in a twisted way, makes them loosing out double.