Well, I do imagine there’s some caveats as to the efficacy of welfare programs, but we’ll stick to this topic :D
There’s been hundreds of food programs over the decades, but there really isn’t a good way to do it. If you just sent aid to a government or group, it tends to either destabilise the local economy or empowers people you don’t want to empower, like armed groups who can just take that aid for themselves.
But if you send individual aid, there’s issues too. For example, let’s say you set up a ‘work for food’ program. Sounds great, right? But what that ends up doing is that the WFF option is more attractive than tending your own farm or doing work with future benefits. Basically, WFF pays now - a farm doesn’t.
The best way to help is to give people tools and knowledge. Teach a man to fish and all that. But when faced with kids starving now, that’s obviously a hard sell.
I work for a newspaper and actually spoke to a gentleman a couple days ago whose student group helped set up a school in Ghana 30 years ago. Kids who grew up in the literal gutter got free schooling there. And it works! The reason we spoke was because the school is now setting up a music program and they’re collecting used musical instruments. He told me that during his last visit, he met a girl who went to that school and was now graduating from university. Isn’t that amazing?
Problem is, that takes 20 years to do. And that’s a mighty difficult thing to accomplish in places that are actively in conflict like Sudan.
Food aid was never meant to develop amy country. It’s meant to reduce starvation in the near term. But that school in Ghana couldn’t be successful if their students were starving. Im just guessing but that school probably received a lot of food aid so that their students could learn without hunger.
Just fyi, this is the same argument that conservatives use when trying to gut welfare programs
Well, I do imagine there’s some caveats as to the efficacy of welfare programs, but we’ll stick to this topic :D
There’s been hundreds of food programs over the decades, but there really isn’t a good way to do it. If you just sent aid to a government or group, it tends to either destabilise the local economy or empowers people you don’t want to empower, like armed groups who can just take that aid for themselves.
But if you send individual aid, there’s issues too. For example, let’s say you set up a ‘work for food’ program. Sounds great, right? But what that ends up doing is that the WFF option is more attractive than tending your own farm or doing work with future benefits. Basically, WFF pays now - a farm doesn’t.
The best way to help is to give people tools and knowledge. Teach a man to fish and all that. But when faced with kids starving now, that’s obviously a hard sell.
I work for a newspaper and actually spoke to a gentleman a couple days ago whose student group helped set up a school in Ghana 30 years ago. Kids who grew up in the literal gutter got free schooling there. And it works! The reason we spoke was because the school is now setting up a music program and they’re collecting used musical instruments. He told me that during his last visit, he met a girl who went to that school and was now graduating from university. Isn’t that amazing?
Problem is, that takes 20 years to do. And that’s a mighty difficult thing to accomplish in places that are actively in conflict like Sudan.
Food aid was never meant to develop amy country. It’s meant to reduce starvation in the near term. But that school in Ghana couldn’t be successful if their students were starving. Im just guessing but that school probably received a lot of food aid so that their students could learn without hunger.