Good Intentions Are Not Enough

Step 2: Get to know industry standards/best practices

Step 2 in the series How to make a difference

Good aid takes more than just good intentions, it also takes an understanding of good aid practices. Without this donors or aid workers may invest time and money in projects that are not in the best interest of the aid recipient. While not enforceable by law, these standards encourage professional practices and help avoid common mistakes.

Six general principles found in effectiveness initiatives

One World Trust has a database of civil society self-regulatory initiatives which includes many of the standards and principles I rely on. One World Trust recently analyzed these initiatives found six general principles that are integral to each of the initiatives, described in their article "Responding to NGO Development Effectiveness Initiatives". I've provided a description of each principle below but recommend the chart on page three of the report for more information. Use these principles to determine if the aid agency you are supporting understands and follows good practices.

Isn't it ironic

In Thailand before the influx of missionaries and other foreigners most children went around naked until puberty and after that young women wore only a sarong around their waist. In many rural villages today old women still go around with just a bra for a top. 

A Thai joke about the transition to more modest clothing goes like this; A young woman is was walking down a dirt road when a missionary yells "You're indecent, cover your breasts" frightened the young woman pulls up the bottom of her sarong to cover her bare chest, exposing her naked bottom.

Today young rural Thai women dress very modestly. If shorts are worn at all they're very long, shirts have sleeves, necklines are high. This standard of modesty meant that some of the clothing donated after the tsunami was too indecent for them to wear.

Ironic isn't it, first we import modesty standards then we import immodest clothing.

Donating medicine after disasters

When disaster strikes it's natural to want to help in any way possible, and one of the ways that seems make sense is to donate medicine - either medicine from your own house, or expired medicine that can no longer be sold. However, before jumping into action there are some things you must understand first. The World Health Organization has developed Guidelines for Drug Donations, and it's important to ensure you follow these guidelines so that the medicine you send is helpful rather than harmful.

Be sure you understand and follow WHO's Guidelines for Drug Donations

How can a donation of medicine be harmful? Let's look at a couple of the points in the guidelines and why they came about:

Donating shoes and other aid fads

Just like everything else, aid goes through fads. One of the current fads is donating shoes to people in developing countries. Everywhere I look there's a shoe program. Bins for donated shoes are placed just inside the door of shoe stores, there's a phone commercial featuring a shoe company that gives away a pair of shoes for every pair they sell (I'd be interested to know if they donate their own product or if they purchase shoes locally to donate, it makes a difference), and just this week someone taped plastic bags onto all the the porches in my neighborhood with a note asking for donated shoes to send to Africa.

Now I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they sell shoes in Africa. In fact, I would challenge my well traveled readers to name a country they've visited that didn't have shoes for sell. Just because you visited a village where people weren't wearing shoes doesn't mean that the solution is to take up a collection of shoes to donate. In fact it's often one of the worst solutions to the problem, but it's common because it's a fad that pleases donors, and therefore gets resources and funding. 

Mosquito nets, condomns and recycling

This is a repost of an edited previous post

From the Kenyan newspaper the Daily Nation:

Mosquito net manufactures are teaming up with the provincial administration and village elders in several parts of Kenya in an effort to apprehend and prosecute people who use the products for purposes other than covering beds.

According to Dr Elizabeth Juma, who is the head of malaria control under the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, there has been evidence of people turning the nets into fishing gear especially in Nyanza Province. Now a different group has discovered another lucrative business venture, and are using the nets to make wedding dresses.

Upon reading this news clip in William Easterly's blog "Aid Watch", I was reminded of the training in teaching condom use that all Peace Corps volunteers in Thailand were required to attend due to the rampant AIDS problem in Thailand. In the old days volunteers used bananas in the demonstration but switched to wooden replicas when they discovered that some participants went home and actually put condoms on bananas thinking it had some sort of power to keep them safe. Therefore, I was not surprised to learn that mosquito nets are being used for fishing nets and wedding dresses.

What is an in-kind donation?

An in-kind donation is giving something besides money.

An in-kind donation could be donating goods, such as

• a store donating trash bags to a cleanup project,
• a restaurant donating food for a community event
• an individual donating their used clothes to the local thrift store.

An in-kind donation could also be donating your time or professional services. This could include

• regular volunteers at museums
• an accountant doing the taxes for a non-profit
• company staff helping to plant trees on company time.

Why do we so often give aid in ways that do not support the local economy?

At a dinner party last night the topic of good and bad international assistance came up. A fellow diner had a friend that ran an orphanage in South America and she helped out whenever possible. I carefully brought up the topic of my last posting, that many of the children in orphanages are not actually orphans, but are brought by families too poor to feed and clothe them. My dinner companion agreed that this was also the case in this particular orphanage.

The woman then went on to say that she helped out by purchasing boxes of office and school supplies for the orphanage. She would shop at Staples when they have their sales in the fall and then ship it  to the orphanage. I pointed out that it is far better to buy goods in the local area than to ship them overseas - also the topic of an earlier posting.

The woman vehemently defended her position stating that it was much cheaper to buy the supplies at Staples than buying them in country, and an airline shipped the supplies for free. Although I question whether buying office supplies in the states is cheaper than buying them in the local community, in the end that's not the point.

The worst in-kind donations

Here are the winners from the stories submitted for the worst in-kind donation contest (related post: What is an in-kind donation). You may have your own personal favorites, all submissions can be read here, please feel free to add more. Thanks to everyone that submitted their stories!

The most common in-kind donation

Shoes of all sorts; soccer shoes, running shoes, flip flops, etc... (see post for why this might not be a good donation)

The most ridiculous in-kind donation

Knickers for Africa and bras for Haiti - recent requests were made for donations of both of these items recently by two different organizations

The grossest in-kind donation

Used soap from hotels are collected and sent to Uganda

Worst in-kind donation as a tax write-off
Skeleton shaped suckers leftover from Halloween sent to survivors of Hurricane Mitch

Well-intended attempts to help after a disaster may make a confusing situation worse

The situation after a disaster can be extremely chaotic, as everyone works as quickly as they can to try and help. Adding to this chaos is an increasing number of individuals and companies traveling to the disaster scene to distribute aid. While well-intentioned, these efforts can often exacerbate the problems common to disaster relief, such as:

• A confusion of actors making it impossible to know for sure who has received what already
• Unequal distribution of aid, with some areas getting much more assistance while other areas may get far less
• Creating aid dependency by distributing aid in such a way that people come to depend on it
• An influx of inappropriate aid clogging the ports

The most useful in-kind donations

After having posted a contest to find the worst examples of in-kind donations, it was suggested that there are some in-kind donations that can be useful. Thus, in this post I am asking for examples of the most useful in-kind donations.

I invite you to submit examples of useful in-kind donations, research demonstrating the best types of in-kind donations, or criteria for useful donations.

I'll start by submitting two sets of guidelines from the World Health Organization; Guidelines for Health Care Equipment Donations, and Guidelines for Drug Donations. The four criteria given in the first set of guidelines are specific to health care equipment, however donors would benefit from considering these criteria for all donations.