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Lots of things in life are really, really complicated. Sort of like a rain...
Some things are exquisitely complicated. Making changes, fixing problems, or making improvements to such things is really difficult. Unintended consequences result when you do something simple in a...
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A short explanation of why feel good aid might make things worse
In The Broken “Buy-One, Give-One” Model: 3 Ways to Save Toms Shoes author Cheryl Davenport provides a concise description of the underlying problem with the TOMS model. There’s a huge number of...
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An example of good aid
Are Glasses the New TOMS Shoes? No, according to Lauren Bishop on the NYU Development Research Institute blog. Warby-Parker sells glasses and then donates money to NPOs who train local workers who in...
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6 better questions to ask an NPO than “what’s your overhead?”
Looking at the ‘overhead ratio’ is a lousy way to evaluate the effectiveness of a charity. Once you understand that concept, you are left wondering what else to look at when considering whether to...
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Unintended consequences: After watching all the damage caused by development...
James Shikwati is the Director of Inter Region Economic Network. He is an economist from Kenya. In 2005, he gave an interview to Spiegel, which was titled “For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!” A bit...
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Unintended consequences – “Your help is hurting”
How would you like this to be your legacy on the missions committee? After the genocide in Rwanda, your church decides to help the village by providing eggs to everyone. Great idea, right? Absolutely....
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Improved self-governance is key to development in Africa
That is the core point made by Dr. Mo Ibrahim on how to develop the economies of all 57 African countries. He explains his ideas at: Mo Ibrahim On How (And Why) Africa Should Solve Its Own Problems. He...
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Unintended consequences – generous gift to local church undermines their giving
Mark Williams tells of a giving a generous offering when he was blessed to be the guest preacher at a church in India – Do You Destroy Through Dependency? What he did not expect was his graciousness...
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Unintended consequences – “Your help is hurting,” government to government...
Previous post described how development aid can sometimes cause hurt. Part 2 of that discussion describes how government-to-government aid can sometimes make things worse and prevent development. Jerry...
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“Your help is hurting” – More unintended consequences
“The world is complicated.” In a video from PovertyCure, Peter Greer tells the story I mentioned earlier of how in just one summer help from a U.S. church destroyed the egg market in a small Rwandan...
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The world is complicated – the ‘you-can’t-even-just-hand-out-a-wad-of-cash’...
I don’t understand why, but there has been a lot of tweeting in the twitter world about the wonders of addressing poverty by just giving everyone a handful of cash. That would make a number of aid...
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Trying to make the world less miserable is complicated and messy
One of the big reasons I blog is to help me sort out this big, complicated, messy world. “J”, an anonymous blogger and novelist at AidSpeak, helps in general and especially with his recent post It’s a...
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“No one wants to be a beggar for life” –“Poverty, Inc.”
Poverty, Inc. is a documentary from a group by the same name. You can see the trailer at those links. The way we, that is, the developed world, are doing international development is broken. One...
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