Wat?

What was Bon Jovi doing to African authorities?

I literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Discuss.

Bon Jovi didn't even perform at Live Aid!

I know I kept the topic wide open there, but I did so on purpose. What I mean is this: how do you help the ones you're helping the best with the donations?

Flying over dropping crates or distributing them fairly on the ground? Discuss with local authorities or effectively undermine them? Are there more efficient ways to help them?

Lol, Bono Fox. I can never get that right :)

Never mind, I should get some sleep apparently :P

You should stop taking whatever hallucinogens you've been trying, too.

The money raised at Live Aid was given directly to the Ethiopian government. In what way can that be said to "undermine local authorities" ??

I wish pop stars would undermine me more often, if "undermine" means "give money to".

Huh... Wasn't that the one where they simply dropped crates with food out of planes without much more thought?

I got that the wrong way around, didn't I? Then what was that concert I'm talking about...

Anyway, going to sleep now :)

I remember Africans who were upset because Bono Fox undermined local authorities... Different concert? Fucked up memory?

I am aware of the fact that I look totally ridiculous now, FYI.

This is Fox:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

You meant Vox.

I'm refreshing my memory a bit, and the point was rather that Africans were barely involved in the concert at all, excluding Freddy Mercury. The skeptical Africans say the negative effects are still felt today. So I was confused; they didn't talk to the actual people they were supposed to be helping, but just supported a corrupt government instead, which used much of the money and food to lure people to camps to deport them to the south.

The famine was more like a forced famine.

Live Aid's legacy is said to be thousands of organisations 'fighting' for the 'best' spots like Ethiopia, continuing to support questionable governments and even keeping reports of good news away from the west so money keeps getting donated to fight for a cause that in some cases just isn't a problem.
Mostly well meant, but still not very nice.
Also, many people now think it never rains in Africa and such.

In short, there's relatively little done to help.

I only have Dutch sources, but discuss that I suppose? Feel free to call me out on anything. These are the negative effects I was referring to.

"You meant Vox."

Lolz, true...
It's actually written with an F a lot around here, I simply never saw it written with a V and drew conclusions...

I keep looking ridiculous, don't I?

Bono is called Bono. He's not called "Bono Vox"...

I always hear him called Bono Vox..

Doesn't matter though, does it? I think we all know who we're talking about by now, although it took rather long thanks to me...

"Bono is called Bono. He's not called "Bono Vox"..."

If you're from an anglophone country, follow their media or you like him, chances are you call him Bono. Otherwise, try to stick with Bono Vox unless you want to answer the question "what is bono?"

"I am aware of the fact that I look totally ridiculous now, FYI."

Admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery.

I totally ruined my chance at the discussion I wanted, didn't I?

I'll help you out with that discussion. The word you're looking for is 'sustainable development', not charity. Give a man a fish = charity. Teach him how to fish = development. Leave behind a self-sufficient fishing school = sustainable development.

The trouble with sustainable development is that it's terribly complex and very context dependent. Great interventions can still fail. Bad interventions can succeed. But the key to success is to aim for the right thing. Tons of organizations aim for charity, thereby decreasing the actual resilience of local people, local communities, local economies. Smarter organizations know that it's about education, behavioral change, etc. Those kind of goals are more complex, which is why organizations need to be larger to contain the expertise.

Tons to be said on the topic. In fact, so much that it has it's own Master study.

Well, the thing is, we have enough fish. So it isn't actually that much of a problem if you give them the fish, but instead of the billions of fishes you'd expect, we just feed some people who are able to feed themselves, basically doing nothing about the problem.

Sustainable development is nice, but they should learn how to fish with a full belly ideally, so give them fish too.

Just giving them the consistent stream of fish we're paying for would allow them to make a livinv themselves so they hopefully don't need our fish for a couple of years.

So I think both ways of helping are good, but if I spend a buck on a fish for a poor African, they should get a fish, instead of the upper class getting a buck. That's more my point.

And then there's logistics. Thousands of organisations struggling for the same spot is just a waste of everything.

after a couple of years*

Thanks for the effort to save the discussion btw :)

Oh, and talking to the people is very important too. Simply ask them which organisations actually help them and which are just luring them with food on behave of a corrupt government.

Well, there's tons of problems, corruption being an important one. But there's not one solution. There's good practices, there's quite some failures, and a shitload of 'meh'. Like anywhere.

And on the inefficiency of organizations being everywhere - if you have a method to line up Indian missionary organizations with American rights-based organizations, with Chinese based business/charity conglomerates, let me know. They've been trying since 1995, but it's like herding cats and some of the goals are simply conflicting. For example, when the Republicans have the white house, USAID preaches abstinence as birth control. This in turn is totally unacceptable for many others.

I think you might be underestimating (or overestimating, depends on how you look at it) that part, TheMinisterOfWar.

22 years ago, there were 70 active helping organisations in Ethiopia: 46 foreign, 24 local.

Those 24 local are not very effective, but ok, maybe they were forced to keep it small-scale. 46 foreign for different political positions and different aims on all kinds of stuff. Acceptable I suppose, although I think that can be improved as well.

I don't think you can argue the justification of the amount of organisations helping in Ethiopia, independent of eachother, sometimes copying eachother, struggling with eachother even, were around 2 years ago:

Approximately 5.000 organisations. I have no reason to assume that number changed drastically in those 2 years.

Those donors often have some demands too. The average African country has to send 10.000 reports for donors each year, and "process" approximately 1.000 official visits.

This is even worse than I thought. Basically, we turned charity into a hallmark of our bureaucracy. That is not counting corruption.

I understand we can't just solve that in a day, but surely that's not a neccessary evil or something along those lines?

I mean, name me 5.000 different approaches from different political/religious/whatever points of view that cannot be merged perfectly.

Even if you don't look at the numbers, there doesn't seem to be much talking. Not with the local people, not with eachother. They all just get in eachother's ways, and like I said, some of them are corrupt. We're donating to those organisations too.

Surely there's some improvement possible there?

In fact, I'm thinking of doing something with it myself. I haven't figured out where to start just yet, but I do think making some improvements in this mess is a good goal in life for now.

For now though, just discuss. Basically, what I think can be improved is checking on corruption and better communications with everyone involved, with hopefully some merging as well. But how...