July 08, 2008
Kiva, Heifer -- following on the discussion of Bill Gates' philanthropy, it's worth noting that the long tail of piggy bank philanthropy well outweighs what the plutocrats plump in. I highly recommend Nick Kristof's article last week recounting the remarkable cascade effect direct giving to a well-chosen charity can have. Even if you aren't in a position to donate money, though, you're probably in a position to loan it (see inside).
The most appalling thing I saw while I was in Africa was the rice distribution center in Ethiopia [pic after the jump]. About a hundred people wait around for hours until the trucks come by to unload food; the cycle repeats. We're doing it all wrong -- these infantilizing handouts deter local food production, feed corruption and bureaucracy as much as they feed the indigent, incentivize (as you see) standing around for food rather than earning it, and gift food at a sustenance level but skills at a starvation level. It's the development equivalent of feeding tubes for a persistent vegetative state.
Continued...
CARE recently stopped direct food aid, and I hope others follow suit. The near-term pain of this will be severe but it has to be done, a paternalistic statement that we must stop being paternalistic and start focusing on empowering development strategies with demonstrated effectiveness.
There's only three things that afaik have a demonstrated sustainable effect on development: education, microloans and public health. Turns out, if you can fix it so people live into their 50s they stick around long enough to pass on their knowlege and distribute family burdens. Health is a leading, not trailing, indicator.
Nick Kristof's blog has a rundown of some worthy charities. You can browse and donate at JustGive, and I STRONGLY encourage you to check the financials of any charity you'd like to support.
For direct public heath, you can't do better than Medécins sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders (**** rating), the public health front lines. Your population won't reach 50 later if they're gone at 18 now.
The triumph of Heifer Int'l (*** rating) is that it provides *sustainable* food aid, improves public health and empowers entrepreneurship. A flock of seagulls chickens provides protein for your children and a egss left over to sell or trade at market.
For education, you can have a direct impact by sponsoring the school fees of an African Student. Less than a buck a day pays for a student's fees and supports them in school. No charitynavigator rating for the Rwanda-based Peace House, but I can account first-hand for their excellent and direct work: contact me if you'd like to send a child to school.
Initiatives that help villages build wells and clean water (**** rating) for themselves pay multiple dividends. The construction employs someone local and the public health benefits are enormous. It pays an unsuspected boon to education, though: if you don't need your kid to schlep jerry cans to the well and back
then maybe you can take the crops to town yourself and afford for him to be at school all day.
I think the most effective thing a poor-now but rich-later student can do, though, is microloans. Microfinance is empowering, direct and connective. Right now I've got money on the street to help two mechanics buy tools, and a group of foodsellers buy a plot of land. You can choose someone to connect with by industry and country: help Ugandan loan group member Mpagi Godfrey buy and maintain a motorcycle taxi, or Cambodian Dorn Phun and her husband buy ducks to sell eggs at market.
(A note about the photos from Africa you see on Kiva -- in East Africa you generally pose for a picture by being solemn or at least formal: five confirming, one rejecting examples)
Oh yeah Mr. Flip got me into the Kiva site about a year ago, my $100 is rolled over to my second round of loans now.
Kind of funny that you also posted Heifer here Flip, that's a group thats on ViaGen's list of possible groups to work with on our burgeoning corporate responsibility program.
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Couldn't agree more and to quote Norman Borlaug
"some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things"
Obviously being an aggie type of person this is an issue near and dear to my heart. I'm constantly disgusted by the attitude urbanites in developed nations have about slamming the very food systems that give them the luxury of having the time to get up on their soap boxes.
Dr. Borlaug also has a pretty good forward in The Frankenfood Myth by Gregory Conko and Henry I Miller.
posted by Vanalyn at 09:33AM CST on July 08