For decades, the strategy behind poverty reduction efforts has been to offer the proverbial hand up; the idea being that if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Today, both government agencies and NGOs are still pointing to potential harm done by offering direct aid to impoverished people and national governments.
Indeed, there have been many studies showing areas for concern in direct giving to governments, ranging from inefficient bureaucracy to corruption. Nonetheless, there seems to be a current trend toward direct giving as the next solution to global poverty.
Give money. Crudely, that’s what Ben Affleck, his Eastern Congo Initiative, and a charity called GiveDirectly advocate as a response to global poverty. The idea behind Mr. Affleck’s Initiative is that poor people know what they need, so money directed toward helping the poor is best used directly by them. GiveDirectly takes the concept to a whole different level.
Where the Eastern Congo Initiative creates a direct link between those who give money and community-based organizations (CBOs), organizations that use donations to benefit the local community, GiveDirectly gives the money directly to individuals to sponsor, well, whatever project that individual desires. For example, Bernard Omondi of Kenya used a $1,000 gift to purchase a motorcycle that he uses for his new taxi service, ferrying neighbors around the countryside.
Clearly, the idea of just giving money to poor people is not a novel one. On many street corners in America, we can see something like this happening every day. However, giving money to CBOs and individuals through charities like GiveDirectly is somehow different.
As Mr. Affleck notes, CBOs are decentralized to a point where they can actually anticipate the needs of the local community, knowing the right individuals to contact in order to accomplish specific community goals. Likewise, giving a substantial gift to individuals is more likely to inspire entrepreneurship than, say, a quarter or dollar would in the aforementioned street corner scenario.
It’s not that NGOs were doing bad work, Ben Affleck stated, after doing much research on the Congo. Rather, “the people doing the best work, with the real expertise … were community-based organizations.” In short, want to help? Give money.
– Herman Watson
Sources: Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Eastern Congo Initiative