All Hands Volunteers

Let me make myself very clear:  I am NOT bad-mouthing large relief organizations.  Some are corrupt, I'm sure.  I'm not talking about those.  I'm talking about the big-name groups that have a presence.  My attempt in talking about All Hands Volunteers (http://hands.org/) is to say small is beautiful.   All Hands is not a huge organization with a large overhead.  This means more of the money goes straight to the actual relief work, and quicker.  I like this.  This makes sense to me.  Sometimes it's necessary to have organizations that can pull together a large-scale effort and mobilize people quickly.  Other times it's important to have small organizations that just pick up and go and get themselves on the ground right away without going through the politics and red tape.  All Hands is the latter.

I found out about All Hands through the Japan Society of Boston.   I told my friends there I was willing to volunteer and to pass my name along to anyone contacting them.  Within a few hours e-mails were flying back and forth between me and the Executive Director of All Hands.

May I just go on record and say I have the utmost respect for the people who work at and volunteer for All Hands.  I hope to able to share stories about them, with them and let you know what we're all doing in Japan.

The Executive Director is en route back from Japan as I write this.  I plan to meet with him early next week to get up to speed and to share whatever he has to say.  Stay tuned.