Visions of poor naked children playing in the dirt usually come to mind when one thinks of the 3rd world. Houses made of mud brick, straw or corrugated tin roofs dominate the landscape. Well this is not too far off, but certainly not the rule. There are disparities in wealth just as we have the in the United States, the most wealthy nation in the world. We certainly have all of the modern conveniences at our finger tips, if we have the means to take advantage of it. Often there is a bit of guilt for the people who have “everything”, and our benevolent conscious grips us when we see the commercials about what 20 cents a day can do if we were only to make the phone call to pledge this meager tithe. Millions of people around the world do try to help by donating tens of millions of dollars worth of money, clothes and food. Clearly it is the duty of humanity who can afford it to be socially responsible. It is not as if one chooses at conception where they wish to be born, into what family, or socio economic level. There has been a lot of good done and a plethora of good to be done.
The problem that seems to exist though is that the inefficiencies in development work are such that no person in their right mind would invest in a public company with similar practices. In effect that is what we are doing when we put money into a development project, investing. The goal is not to see financial returns, but rather to see that people are better off than before.
Currently countless dollars are poured into projects that do not have clearly defined goals and objectives. Many religious groups are to blame for this fact. They think that to give gifts are the way to better an underdeveloped nation. This has created a culture of the open palm. People will wait around for years for someone to rebuild buildings, roads, bridges, schools, homes, latrines, wells etc. There are very few non governmental organizations (NGOs) that will teach people how to do the work that will offer them the opportunity to better their own lives.
What is happening is that the open palms have replaced people willing to break a sweat. It is much easier for both parties to throw money at a problem, but never effective. How can people in developing nations be trusted with lump sums of money? Clearly they have not learned the skill of using it to grow and develop or else they would not be in the predicament they are in. Government officials in the US are corrupt; do we honestly think that they would not be here?
An issue that I have seen is that there are too many NGOs. They tend to overlap in many areas and think it beneficial to reinvent the wheel at every step. Understandably they have to have something to sell the investors, but why aren’t there NGOs who are able to direct finances towards programs that exist and have proven effective. How many different English programs are needed? This is the case in most niches of development work. Everyone want to have their name stamped on a product and none of them are very good products. It seems that the type of people who go into development work are scattered. They may begin with an idea and then see need in other areas as well. They then try to reach 6 or 7 different issues and do then all poorly. Could any company be effective if they begin making bicycles and then see the need for t-shirts, bubble gum, couches, light bulbs and cement? Possibly with the work force of the US government this would be possible, but in the real world this is not efficient.
