Money and help ?

>>I commend you for taking the time out of your life to go in on the ground and work to make things better, but telling people that if they don't do that they are better off doing nothing won't make anything better.

What if it's the truth? Is making yourself feel better more important than helping them? The simple fact is until people accept that aid programs have a cost on the developing country and that not all aid is helpful they will continue to be unsuccessful in the long term. (BTW this can also be applied to social services.)

My personal view when it comes to charity is that I don't donate anything (time,money,goods) unless I know where it is going. It's a philosophy I intend to follow for the rest of my life. I'd love to push some of the responsibility off onto others but mountain of historical evidence tells us that it's far too easy for aid to be wasted , or harm them. I've mainly donated time and skills , and goods that aren't needed to charity so far because I've chosen a different path than most but I'm facing the situation where I could become reasonably wealthy from my own hard work and a bit of luck , so it's something I've thought about a lot. In the long term finding out that my help was harmful even though it had the best intentions would more than counteract the temporary joy from doing it. I'd feel responsible for the harm even though it was unintended (and I would be responsible for it). So looking to the long term and taking a careful involved approach is really a win/win for everybody including me.

There are many reasons why aid fails but a lot of it has to do with exploiting the countries for resources and labour. In the long run I suspect we would be better not to exploit these countries AND give them education through information and helping them construct things using basic skills. We can shorten the time to bring them up to our technological level by showing them some of the mistakes on the way up and letting them chart a better path.

If we exploit these countries we aren't helping them and we aren't letting them choose the way they want to be ,often we are supporting a Govt that the people don't want or that isn't sustainable just so we can get what we want.

It's also no use teaching them how to build or use something if they can't replicate and maintain it themselves. There are numerous times in history when we've donated technology only for it to be useless in a couple of years when the program ends because they can't maintain it (or it's too costly to maintain it). If we give them aid in the form of goods to supplement a short term shortfall we have to be careful we don't wipe out their existing industry or make them dependent on it.