Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Generous Giving Stats & Trends

Dream weaving seen today at a philanthropy web site:
"According to the Borgen Project, annual expenditures of $19 billion between now and 2015 could eliminate global starvation and malnutrition. Another $12 billion per year over that same time period could provide education for every child on earth. And an additional $15 billion each year could provide universal access to clean water and sanitation."

Not true. Global starvation, malnutrition and sanitation have never been about enough money or calories. It's about power held by the governments which hold the people, which make the laws, which ignore the terrorists (like Uganda and Libya); it's about resources diverted from infrastructure like roads which move food and goods to market into glittering palaces like those that housed Saddam Hussein and his sons or Idi Amin or Pol Pot or Joseph Stalin. 35 years ago when I worked with agricultural credit files as a librarian, the evidence was clear, and it's never changed. We the people still believe you can fight evil with more money.

Generous Giving Stats & Trends

3 comments:

Norma said...

Thanks for keeping this brief. Don't take my word for it; there's plenty of research to show that the guilt money poured into Africa has done little. Only that money used to spread the Gospel, which is raging in Africa, has been well spent. In fact, the USA could use a few good African missionaries--there's one in our church.

Saint Brian the Godless said...

And you want my posts to be short?

Attention span problems?

Norma said...

Brian, your attention span is short--you've forgotten this is not your blog and that you can write dissertation length material at your blog.

I know nothing about how Kenya treats Gays, but generally in African Muslim countries, they aren't safe, so I assume that culturally that could rub off on other religions too.

If you don't think money invested in Christian missions is well spent, that's your right, but as an investment it has had phenomenal results.