How do the real local champions tolerate us, international ‘experts’ who rotate in and out of their countries and keep showing up – different faces, same stupid questions – like a bad penny? What do we mean when we talk about supporting local actors? And are we really ready to relinquish control, face our shortcomings and humbly listen?
Why should there be hunger and privation in any land, in any city, at any table when we have the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all humankind with the basic necessities of life? There is no deficit in human resources; the deficit is in human will.
If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.
Recipe For Safer Drinking Water? Add Sun, Salt And Lime
Sun, salt and lime sounds like the beginnings of a cocktail recipe, but for some, it could mean cleaner, life-sustaining water.
“It’s a relatively simple add-on to a treatment that’s already widely accepted”
Together, we can stop malnutrition, not just for one child, but for 15 million. We can end poverty, not just for one person, but for 50 million. Together we can break the cycle.
Spread the word ONE.ORG
A cool map that shows where our petition signers from our most recent campaign come from. +50,000 from Africa, +40,000 from Europe, +90,000 from North America.
Have you signed? If not, go here:http://bit.ly/HElvOF
Sunglasses at Night: Wonder what it's like to live on $1.50 a day?
From CARE:
“Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live on $1.50 a day?
Thousands of people across the United States, and tens of thousands across the world, will be asking themselves this question as they take action to raise awareness about global poverty by living on the equivalent of the…
Conserve India - Fighting Poverty through Fashion
Born of a desire to reduce India’s rubbish mountain, improve energy efficiency, and help some of Delhi’s poorest out of the city’s slums, Conserve India achieves all this by turning plastic bags into high fashion.
By buying a Conserve bag, belt, wallet, shoe, or necklace, you not only get to be a trend setter with a beautiful, funky piece of high fashion - you will also be helping some of India’s poorest people and its environment.
The White Savior Industrial Complex
And we also agree on something else: that there is an internal ethical urge that demands that each of us serve justice as much as he or she can. But beyond the immediate attention that he rightly pays hungry mouths, child soldiers, or raped civilians, there are more complex and more widespread problems. There are serious problems of governance, of infrastructure, of democracy, and of law and order. These problems are neither simple in themselves nor are they reducible to slogans. Such problems are both intricate and intensely local.
The White Savior Industrial Complex is a valve for releasing the unbearable pressures that build in a system built on pillage. We can participate in the economic destruction of Haiti over long years, but when the earthquake strikes it feels good to send $10 each to the rescue fund. I have no opposition, in principle, to such donations (I frequently make them myself), but we must do such things only with awareness of what else is involved. If we are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a minimum requirement.
KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.
7 worst international aid ideas
Maybe their hearts were in the right place. Maybe not. Either way, these are solid contenders for the title of “worst attempts at helping others since colonialism.”
1. One million t-shirts for Africa
2. TOMS Buy-One-Give-One
…dumping shoes in places where people might otherwise be employed to make them.
3. Machine gun preacher
Problems with Sam Childers, the machine gun preacher, are so much more straightforward.
It’s dangerous and insane.
4. 50 Cent ransoming children in Somalia
So let’s break that down.
A. If you Like Fifty’s Facebook page — without even buying the drink — a child, presumably in Somalia, gets fed.
B. We can infer that there is a pot of dollars somewhere earmarked for feeding needy children. Two million meals worth of feeding if you count the million Like-meals plus the potential million bonus.
C. Those meals, while they could be donated, and have presumably been budgeted for, willnot be, except to the extent that you give Street King props online.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is called extortion.
5. Donor fund restrictions
6. Making food aid the same colour as cluster munitions.
Left is delicious. Right will kill you. You try tell the difference if you can’t read English and live out in the steppes.
7. Making USAID a foreign policy tool
In 1990, on the eve of the first Gulf War, Yemeni Ambassador Abdullah Saleh al-Ashtal voted no to using force against Iraq in a security council session. US Ambassador Thomas Pickering walked to the Yemeni Ambassador’s seat and retorted, “That was the most expensive No vote you ever cast.” Immediately afterwards, USAID ceased operations and funding in Yemen.
