I am frequently asked by people what they can do to help Haiti, or Rwanda, or whichever country I am traveling to or living in at that time. For a long time I didn't know what to say; the problems are incredibly entrenched and complicated. The last thing people need is for you to show up unannounced and without a plan. The second to last thing they need is for you to show up announced and with a plan and without any experience. The first thing they think they need is money. Except sometimes the third to last thing they really need is money, because it creates dependence, because it eliminates initiative and because, when dumped into the jet stream of NGOs and development aid, it has a funny way of being absorbed like oil into sandstone, leaving only a thin slick and the memory of brief abundance behind.
The most effective projects I have seen are small, with personally invested leaders working directly with a community or with a few families. They:
1) are based on simple technologies (like radio or basic agricultural improvements like crop rotation or giving someone a sewing machine)
2) address a quantifiable problem that can be fixed with one intervention (like pulling teeth and repairing cataracts or rehydrating cholera patients on the edge of death)
3) minimize publicity (no t-shirts, no billboards announcing donors, no press releases, no promises of regular success stories - or at least the minimum of all of these) and maximize results
4) prioritize quality over quantity and are small, extremely targeted and in it for the long-term
5) are often run by people who feel accountable to a higher power and to a foundational set of values, and to the community at home who provided them with every penny of the money that they are using
6) are usually behind-the-scenes, thankless, under-paid and pretty much totally un-sexy.
If you are giving money: give it to the most direct source you can. Are you part of a church that supports a sister community in Guyana? Buy them a borehole. Eliminate the middle men. Do you have a neighbor whose aunt has built a school in Thailand? Sponsor the teacher fees; buy them uniforms. Take a year off from your teaching job (aka: you're qualified) and go teach them math. Did you just see a poster about a group selling jewelry and hand-made bags from Uganda next Sunday? Go and buy them. Get Christmas presents for your family. Keep the website address and pass it on to friends. Restructure your consuming.
Remember that your money can get sucked up like angel cake crumbs under a Hoover by the overhead structure of a large charity. If you are donating to an NGO, ask them to tell you what their "Overhead" percentage is. This is the money that goes towards running the machine that is their NGO, instead of towards the costs of programming that support people. 17% is too much. I want it under 10. And that's hard to find.
Do you not have any money? Look up the issues that affect that country and then look up the legislation in our country that affects those issues and lobby your representatives. Write letters. Call them.
I swear I grew up hearing this and thought it was a lot of BS - how does my letter to some person I don't even know matter at all? But I will never forget the Georgia state reps who looked so shocked to see our student group in graduate school lobbying for immigrant healthcare rights. One of them told us, "Nobody ever comes here to talk to us from the community. Especially not young people."
I think he would have supported almost anything we asked for, he was so happy just to see citizens engaging with their elected officials.
Buy FairTrade or Rainforest Alliance. It is small but it does make a difference. It is your consumer power. Coffee, tea, chocolate, honey, rice, sugar, bananas or other tropical fruits. Those are the common ones. And when you buy more directly from the supplier - either from your hometown farmer, or from the small-scale organization that embraces a value system and the idea of fair prices and actually knows their farmers and walks the land they farm, you are helping. A lot.
Write, Post, Blog, Tweet, Film, Speak. Anything. If you care about it enough you will convince other people to care about it, too. Have faith in your passion.
No High Heels, Please. The obvious note of caution: after the earthquake in Haiti (anniversary #2 is around the corner - Jan 12), Haiti received cargo ships full of donations in-kind. Including one infamous shipment of shoes that included loads of high heels. Which is nice. But not super useful. Please do not send in-kind donations (e.g. "things") unless there is a clear and agreed destination, and an analysis of cost that makes sense.
Developing countries need improved infrastructure, educational and economic opportunities, technological support for these opportunities, and highly targeted programs that address highly specific needs (e.g. creation of a supply chain for cheap sanitary pads that girls in the village can buy so they don't miss school and deal with more discrimination).
And they need the people who want to help them to listen to them and hear what it is they feel that they need, and not impose upon them their own solutions. Which is harder to do than it sounds.
We cannot rely on large-scale systems to take care of the people in our community who need help. The difference in today's world is that our 'community' is much larger than it used to be. And our responsibility, if we are people born to privilege, is much larger than it otherwise would be. And some extensions of our global community - e.g. the global South - need more support than others.
But the strength of accountability of people who know each other to each other is the same.
With your donations, aim to create the shortest chain possible between yourself and the other good people who are implementing and receiving. At best, you should be able to name them all.
If one first-world family adopted one third-world family and treated them like…family…imagine, after a generation, what a difference that would make to the entire world.
Everything is connected. Start anywhere. But make your choices count.
Photo credits: Emily Cavan
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