July 06, 2009
International Aid And Its Defenders
Why do people get so offended by criticism of international aid?
Tori Hogan, a filmmaker who recently made a documentary about the effectiveness of overseas development projects, asks this question and writes that two sets of people — donors, especially ones who contribute small amounts of money, and aid workers — are particularly defensive.
On Social Edge, a Web site operated by the Skoll Foundation, she says that donors are “desperately trying to convince themselves that their good intentions and willingness to want to help is enough,” while aid workers feel like her film is “questioning the validity of their life’s work.”
She argues that foreign assistance programs need to foster a “culture of critical reflection” to improve, but aid recipients themselves may have to build such an effort.
To be sure, there appears to be growing number of people and programs trying to provide such feedback.
Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born and Oxford-trained economist, has become a leading critic with her book Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa.
Organizations like the Fritz Institute, a nonprofit research group in San Francisco, have started to survey the people who have received disaster relief in Asia and elsewhere to find out their perception of how aid was provided.
And in a similar fashion, grant makers, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have started to explore how to receive and act on feedback from the beneficiaries of their giving. While Gates is trying this approach with its domestic programs, it may try to expand the project to overseas grant making.
What do you think? Do donors and aid workers usually respond to criticism poorly? Click on the comment button below to share your views.
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I have found that donors are extremely sensitive to hearing that they may have made bad donor decisions. They donated money as best they could with the knowledge and information they had. By bluntly pointing out problems with aid programs that are similar to the one they funded they may feel as though it’s an attack on their beliefs or decisions. You have to walk an extremely fine line when criticizing aid programs. You have to empathize with their decision and then suggest that it might not have been the best decision, and give them suggestions for future decisions. Unfortunately, the closer they were to to program, especially if they volunteered for it or personally attended an activity, the less they’re willing or able to hear what you have to say.
Having said that there is a great interest in the right way to give. But how to you explain and demonstrate the right way to give without challenging the wrong way to give?
— Saundra Jul 6, 06:48 PM #
I do often feel that we development workers are sensitive to the type of criticism found in Dead Aid and many other recent books. But it is often because all Aid is lumped together as if it is one homogeneous process. Moyo distinguishes between private philanthropic work, small NGO work and governmental aid in her book and addresses the shortcomings of the latter. So often, the valid critique of bilateral and multilateral funding in the general media gets unfairly and inaccurately applied to everyone working in International Development. Geneva Global, the organisation I work for, has in the last decade facilitated granting to 1650 local, indiginous projects and has a 86% success rate compared to quantifiable life change indicators. (Our target is 80%- 100% means we are being too cautious in our project selection and possibly missing out on more creative, innovative local social entrapreneurs.) We need to be more sophisticated in defining what type of Aid we are talking about, as my experience over the last 25 years tells me that Aid results differs widely according to its methodology- just like so many other walks of life!
— Doug Balfour Jul 8, 05:23 PM #