Questions Still Swirl Around Yele

By: The Buzz | Posted: January 20, 2010

Yele is continuing to catch heat. According to unnamed sources who spoke with Gawker, the realities in Haiti are too big for Wyclef Jean's foundation to handle

People who have worked for Yele Haiti in the past are speaking up to express concern that Jean's celebrity is drawing urgently needed donations away from established NGOs and to Yele, which they say is ill-equipped to deliver urgently needed disaster relief.

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"Yele is a joke among NGOs in Haiti," said a freelance videographer who worked one year for the organization in Port-au-Prince and declined to be named. "It would be like if you gave me and my friends several million dollars and said, 'OK, go help Haiti.'"

Separately, sources are coming forward with new accusations about how Jean personally profited from Yele's charitable operations: Two sources familiar with Yele's finances tell Gawker Jean took a $60,000 "finder's fee" in 2006 after Yele sold a photograph of a pregnant Angelina Jolie to People magazine for $600,000, which was supposed to go to the charity.

Is this a witch hunt? Some might say so. As one Gawker commenter noted

I understand the need for transparency, and the need to get resources out fast. But the fact of the matter is, these last few articles make it seem like Yele is stealing everyone's dollars while bigger NGO's are waiting on the ground for them. If Yele is projecting only $1 mil a day, the Red Cross alone is generating AT LEAST twice as much- Yele text donations are $5 and Red Cross's ARE $10. So please stop making this article seem like Yele is hoarding all of the relief money and halting other NGO's from doing their job.

And on Jack and Jill Politics, poster Zizi offered this

Wyclef Jean just learned a big lesson about the hypocrisies entrenched in the big club of the lucrative world of American and global humanitarian industry. I know, my spouse works for the United Nations, and tells me I would not believe that the organization and the donors just see this new tragedy like all the previous ones – a business opportunity from which money is to be made and circulated, the usual suspects fat-salaried, missions extended over long-periods. The problems on the ground are not intended to be solved in ways that empower the indigenous people. “Aid” is intended to create a dependency syndrome that ensures the prolonged footprint of the humanitarian industry in the disaster zone.

Thoughts?