beats me wrote:TomViolenz wrote:beats me wrote:I’m complaining because the impression that no matter the amount of aid it never has any lasting impact while the population of those in need of aid increases.
And that human nature demands the advertising exploitation of babies and kids in a crisis because nobody is going to donate to “this village of people in their 30’s needs your help!”
And our media is the worst. In summary “You live in the greatest country on earth. Now here’s 30 minutes of stories that totally contradicts that.”
All nice, but your rant sounded like you were actually blaming the people in need for all that systemic snafu.
I think there’s some kind of mass denial that these kids featured in these commercials, news stories, or documentaries never age or grow up. Where are the kids from the 80’s relief campaigns? Perhaps some now contributing to the problem we helped them overcome as a kid?
Of course I’m not saying across the board and that nobody deserves our aid. I’m saying they aren’t all 100% innocent victims and warlord based displacement doesn’t give a pass to lawless Babies by Rape factories.
Many of these private aid organisations are non-profits in name only. You can be a non-profit that pays very good salaries, gives out contracts to special conditions, buys lots and lots of ad space etc, etc.
For a dollar donated to many of them, only pennies actually arrive where they are needed.
So you should rather think of them as a cynical way to make money by using the poorest of the poor as a means to guilt trip you.
State sponsored aid organisations are mostly not better, just evil in a different way. They use aid as a political tool to enhance their sphere of influence and enrich their croonies. Often making the situation on the ground actually worse in the process.
Religiously sponsored organizations of course use this to further the religious brain washing in the regions they
help and to make their members at home believe they are the good, god fearing people. The rise of the Evangelicals in Africa is staggering. (Especially considering, that most of the Christian part of the African population was actually Catholic until very recently)
It gets really bad when the last two entities merge their goals, like they did under Bush, where massive amounts of funds were used to promote abstinence only programs. Yes,
abstinence only programs, in places where women often have very few rights to even say no and AIDS is a major problem. It boggles the mind
Organizations like the (very good) Bill and Melida Gates foundation are the absolute exception to the rule.
If you want to help people, really do your research in regards to which channels you want to do it through. I donated to "Doctors without borders" before, and I think they deserve all the help they can get.
If you find sincere philantropists (like Bill and Melinda Gates) then their foundations can also be good ways to achieve this.
But please stop blaming the victims. It's disgusting!
It's happening so often, in so many places, one only needs to throw a dart on a map and it's like 'oh, look. a massacre just happened there.'
I am not in looking on this from the comfort of distance. I live here. I am a South African and and African too - no better or no worse than any other person, regardless of race, who lives and feels connected to this continent. Which is where I will live until I die. 