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Top tips on how to help folk in the developing world

March 30, 2011 By

It is day 2 of Nikki P’s 30 day blog challenge and if you missed day1 you can catch up here. My task for today is to give you the readers some tips  regarding my area of work

This was always going to be a difficult one for me as there are no fast rules here. But I will give it a try by answering a question that comes up time and time again

What can we in the West do to help folk in Africa?

  1. Involve the community right from the start in any development programme to ensure that you don’t find yourself in the same situation Madonna did, as correcting mistake can be expensive and a lot of harm may have been done by then.
  2. if you want to help, do your home work and find out who needs your help, find out too if your values and theirs line up, this will save you heartache along the way. For example if you believe AID as tool to fight poverty is wrong then seek out organisations that help communities become self sufficient such as the charity  SEND A COW
  3. money is hard to come by these days and if you are like me you probably  need every penny you make, but at some level you feel that you ought to make a contribution to folk in the developing world. My tip would be look at shopping your habits.  The choices you make can create a win win win situation which ensures that although you have parted with your your money it has gone towards something you wanted to buy anyway, so you have something to show for your money but the person in the developing world has earned an income by virtue of your purchase and the retailer has earned an income too. How would this work in practice? Well, you maybe looking for new summer accessories and where you choose to buy these accessories may impact folk in the developing world.

    Fashion accessories for Summer from Ethnic Supplies

  4. Finally have you considered sharing your skills with folk in the developing world.  Now most folk I come across do not know that they have skills folk need or are worried about being required by orgnanisations to commit to a specific number of months whilst some worry about cost. This needn’t be the case, and if you don’t believe me check this out this project. If you ordinarily spend your two week holiday in Ibiza, you may want to spend it in a a typical African village, where you could learn about their  way of life,  teach English in a local school etc- this would mean an alternative holiday for you but also the folk in the community would benefit from any skills you may have. I can also guarantee that this would be the best holiday you ever took
     

So there you have it folk,  these tips will enable you

  • to  help those less fortunate than you are without breaking into  a bank,
  • support causes that appeal to your core values by creating  win, win win situations that mean you have something to show for your hard earned cash
  • and also enable you to share your skills with folk in the developing world

 

    Filed Under: Latest, Popular post, Poverty in Africa, Volunteering Tagged With: , , ,

    WV USA, TShirts and the role of NGOS

    February 13, 2011 By

    I hope you have by now sorted out a present for your valentine and those who made their choice based on Sarah’s recommendation, A BIG THANK YOU.

    For you see here at Ethnic Supplies we believe this is the best way to address  poverty- what can  folk do to help themselves out of poverty and what can we do to help them achieve this goal?

    Simple?

    You would certainly think so. But in an ideal world things are not that straight forward and it is always tempting to cut corners.

    small hats

    How?

    When you are involved in development work, your work will bring you face to face with situations  that will make you want to throw money or Gifts in Kind and make them go away and it does happen to the best of us. The ability to desist this temptation to take short cuts is what carries you through and a key question to ask is

    What about the next time? And trust me there will be a next time and another and another etc I suppose this would not be a problem if you have access to a gazzillion dollars and are inherently unethical.

    I hope you are still with me so far as this gets interesting

    This week I have written two blog posts on NGOs and Aid agencies. As far as I know or rather the ideal NGOs and Aid agencies should not be inherently unethical

    In one post I asked a question IN WHOSE INTEREST DO NGOS AND AID AGENCIES WORK?.  This post was inspired by a story about food shortages in Karamoja North East Uganda a  region that has had Aid Agencies and NGO’s for nearly half a century but remains desperately poor. The situation is so bad that folk have taken to eating goat skin in order to survive because the World Food Program has woken up and decided that instead of handing out food they should encourage folk to grow their own food.

    The Second post,  WORLD VISION AND THOSE 100,00 THSIRTS OK I admit this is a bit of a rant. This post was inspired by  going discussions on various social media platforms regarding the decision by World Vision USA  to dump 100,000 T shirts that have been gifted to them in kind by NFL. Never mind that Tshirts are from losing teams which shows how much regard WV USA has for the communities in which they work or perhaps they see folk in the developing world as losers- who knows?

    So  take you back to where I started it is tempting to throw money or even gifts in kind at problems in the developing world but in our opinion that does not make the problem go away as demonstrated by the Karamoja example.

    If you are spending other people’s  money like NGO’s do it is not the ethical thing to do.

    So why then is World Vision USA justifying their position in this matter? As the Americans Say GO FIGURE

    And when you do please come back and share your views here.

    Filed Under: Ethics, Latest, Popular post Tagged With: , , , ,

    For every £1 that goes in £10 leaves

    October 20, 2010 By

    An interesting statistic indeed but what does it mean?

    On Monday 18th Oct 2010 Channel 4′s Dispatches programme loked at how the Rich in the UK beat the Tax system. There were two surprises for me as I watched this programme

    1. Andrew Mitchell Secretary for state International Development whose budget has been ring fenced was one of the super rich implicated by the programme

      Andrew Mitchell -photo from Wikipedia

    2. The tax evasion has implications for overseas development.I have previously written about Vulture funds that see companies buying up third world debt and us the tax payers picking the tab so this was fascinating stuff indeed

    Point number 2 was especially interesting the expert interviewed was John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and this is what he had to say

    for every £1 that goes  out of the rich countries into the developing world as Aid at least £10 of capital flows out of those countries illicitly into tax heavens through offshore structures and this explains in part why developing countries have not been able to finance their own development and remain reliant on aid and external borrowing

    WOW! that statement left me lost for words and that is very unusual I must say.

    But surely the secretary of state knows this?  Well I hope so anyway! It  was interesting note that he ended his speech at  the London School of Economics with that all so familiar ConDem slogan

    WE ARE ALL IN THIS  TOGETHER

    Well are we?  Based on the information provided in this programme it doesn’t sound like it. One would also be forgiven for reaching the conclusion that only the rich truly benefit from Aid.

    The question where do we go from here? If those that should know better are themselves seemingly avoiding the taxman what about the poor?

    Further reading on the issue of ring fencing the Aid budget is at http://www.birdsontheblog.co.uk/has-britain-exported-its-welfare-benefits-system-to-africa/

    Have you got a view? Did you perhaps watch the programme? What did you make of it

    Filed Under: Ethics, Latest, Popular post Tagged With: , , ,