international aid - i should log off

Yesterday I vented my frustration at the state of the aid business. It is easy for me to point fingers and note that many of the places in Africa that have been receiving aid dollars have been doing so for over 40 years; with little to nothing to show for it in the form of positive change. Western nations (and now Eastern, China is quite active in the undeveloped and developing worlds) have their own agenda’s to support…and who can blame them…democratic governments stay in power by keeping their voting citizens rich and happy.

So how do we fix the problem? There are a few ways that I really believe a person can make a difference from far away.

The most obvious, with Haiti in the nightly news is disaster assistance. When things go terribly wrong it IS important to offer aid, with an end in sight, so as to help a country or a people through a tough time. I don’t know what the situation is like in Haiti but the fact is that it is far more helpful to Haiti to have Haitians do the helping, where and when they can, than to have the US Army doing it all. This is one realm that the US will not be accused of lacking an ‘exit strategy.’

The second is education. Many of these poor countries suffer from a combination of poor education systems and brain drain, where those who are smart and well off enough to get an education leave the country for better jobs abroad. Supporting ‘in-country’ education is the only way to stop these problems and help a people grow internally, with their own—native—lawyers and lawmakers to lead the country to prosperity, making things right for business instead of right for corruption. This can only come from education and if the first teachers are Western, this should only be temporary until local teachers can take up the charge.

The third is business. If you have $100 you want to throw at Africa to help, do it as a business rather than a donor. People don’t work for donations but they do work for $$ and we’ve seen the pride people have when they work for themselves to lift themselves up and out of poverty…nothing beats it. Tourism is great, I’m clearly biased naturally, but it pumps money directly into a community and allows people to work for that income. The man with whom we booked our Tanzanian safari, Peter, started as a porter on Mt. Kilimanjaro, working his way up through cooking and assisting to eventually guiding and running his own business. He was proud, he was working hard, and it was a pleasure to do business with him. His is the kind of story that changes these poor countries for the better, not the presence of UNICEF camps and USAID food.

So if you don’t have your own business to run, we have a solution for you….help a local get themselves started in business. We’ve recently set up the ISHOULDLOGOFF.com group on Kiva.org. If you don’t know what Kiva is, you’re welcome to read up on it but it basically connects people in the West with a few dollars to spare with people in the undeveloped world who need those dollars, and you make a loan directly to them…. Yes, I said a loan. This is called micro-finance and, in my opinion will do more to help the undeveloped world than any amount of hunger porn on CNN will ever do…..

Recently, somewhere in America, a politician was forced to backtrack from comments he made comparing people on welfare to wild animals. The problem, he said, was that if you feed them, they would breed. Although his comments were crass, there was an underlying message that he failed to pass on when uttered that awful metaphor…handouts create dependence, dependence is bad.

We have been to some of the poorest countries in the entire world on this trip: Guatemala, Bolivia, and of course the ‘South Park’ favorite of Ethiopia. Throughout these countries we’ve seen, in living color, the people who sometimes grace your televisions in “hunger porn” commercials where some international aid agency is trying to get you to send money to support a child or a community.

When food and money enter a community from a foreign source, it can take away the people’s need to work and support themselves and places that ability in the hands of The West. We have seen people so dependent (not everyone, but many nonetheless) on this aid that they no longer work, find food themselves, or otherwise put ‘effort’ into life.

There are countless stories of how “sponsor a child” programs have destroyed communities because one child is chosen for new books and not another. We’ve seen many children kept out of school so that they can beg, as this is more profitable in the short term. Giving out sweets is a problem because if it is done by many people, eventually the child recipient might have no teeth since we’re not giving out toothpaste as well. School supplies are probably the best option, so long as they are given to a school or community to be distributed equitably to all rather than used to stock an individual’s hoard. In one town we visited the known scam for children was to ask foreigners to buy them a book directly from the shop, once the tourist left the child simply returns the book for cash.

If I sound like I’m standing on a soapbox, it’s because I feel a need to vent. Throughout Africa we’ve been witness to UNICEF camps, OXFAM caravans, and USAID food vats. We’ve watched as aid workers come to Africa, drive around in 4×4’s, and leave the place no better than they found it…staying only at the fanciest hotels in town or in a specialized camp with more security than Baghdad’s Green Zone. And if you think at least USAID food aid serves to help feed people, you’d be surprised that the people it helps most is the American farmer. The US Government buys this food, from our farmers to support them, pays to ship it over seas, gives it away for free, all for it to be bought and sold on the local market at market prices. Generally we see USAID food in shops and stores available for sale.

The next time you see hunger porn on the television remember that the business of aid is just that, a business. The goal is certainly altruistic, don’t get me wrong, but the practice can be anything but. There is a right way to help and a wrong way to help. One friend of ours shared a story of how she was told by one of these officials that, with luck, this organization would have enough funding to be involved in Africa indefinitely. This official was then surprised at the response of shock and dismay she received when the group she was addressing pointed out that if the goal is to supply handouts indefinitely then clearly the organization wasn’t helping anyone but themselves….

This is part one of a two part post. I don’t believe that these problems are without solutions and that we, as “rich” people cannot help in someway; but I do believe there is a right way and a wrong way. Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for life.

Stop Hunger Porn #2: Engage and Help

Stop Hunger Porn #1: Stop Donating

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