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Yes, but you can't use blades of grass to buy the supplies for your small crafts business, or the seeds for your small farm, or pay your child's school fees ...
Capital - credit, even - really is needed for most development.
Maybe you can use a stick to catch fish, but I couldn't use a quill pen to do my job, unless I felt like trying to live on the few dollars a day I could make at that speed. Many small businesspeople in our countries borrow (or get government aid) in order to start or improve their businesses, or get the training to do the job. People in developing countries are no different.
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Good evening, everybody
I have to confess, I have jumped four pages after finding this
"while this counrtry is in such a state
its foreign aid that should be cut
why should we pay for other countries to breed
more kids so more mouths to feed
it goes on in a never ending circle
if they want aid give them contraception"
I don't normally do that - I usually take the time to read all the debate, but this has made my so very angry (sorry, whoever posted it)
In answer to the question - I like to think of myself as a citizen of a civilised country, and one of the obligations we have as a part of the affluent world is to give to those less well off. I personally have no problem with a part of my taxes going to help people who are in a much, much worse situation that I can ever imagine.
As for the rest - we already pay far too much for people who continue to "breed" and have no clue about contraception. And they don't live in third world countries. However, they do go on the Jeremy Kyle show on a daily basis.
Well, that's that off my chest
Sue x
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Thus surely people in developing countries would benefit from the wisdom of "developed" countries?
No point giving laptops if they don't know how to generate electricity.I still feel that more aid is achieved by helping to build an infrastructure for a country to stabalise & then move forward itself.
If the Govts won't hand the money over (ie we suspect they're corrupt) surely it's better to provide "hands on" help & keep the people out of deeper debt?
Hi Suzian this thread is swerving a bit-it was really to do with the 3% Gift Aid charities will lose thanks to the powers that be.(re Jeremy Kyle very valid point!)
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Good evening,
I've just done what I should've done before my previous post - ie read the whole thread
Firstly Joy - I still don't agree with you, but I understand your views better now. My apologies.
Eeyore - sorry for my part in the swerving. How this Government can pretend (and I DO mean pretend) to believe in the "Big Society" and at the same time penalise charities I don't know.
Or perhaps I do. I'm a trustee of a local CVS (a charitable organisation which supports small, voluntary groups with practical help). We'll be very lucky to survive another year. We've always had a bit of financial support from our local authority, but they won't be able to provide anything this year, since this caring government has cut local authority expenditure by about a quarter.
Sue x
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Just to keep swerving Eeyore13 ... ;)
"No point giving laptops if they don't know how to generate electricity.I still feel that more aid is achieved by helping to build an infrastructure for a country to stabalise & then move forward itself."
I think you may have a slightly skewed view of aid.
First, everybody knows how to generate electricity. All these countries we're talking about, they all have universities, and corporations, and all that. What they are lacking is the capital to build the infrastructure.
And that's where the problems come in.
The World Bank demands that money be invested in big infrastructure projects when sometimes, it's the small local investments that are really needed, in terms of improving people's lives -- things like wells and water pumps, or pipe systems, so the women don't have to spend half their lives fetching water miles away and can be more productive, and child vaccination and mosquito nets, and the small loans/investments I mentioned. The World Bank makes other demands too, that are in the interests of the developed countries, not the countries supposedly being helped. Privatization, for instance. Just look:
http://www.whirledbank.org/development/private.html
"In March 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) threatened to cancel promised loans and to sever relations with Moldova if the former Soviet Republic failed to privatize key agricultural industries. Likewise, Mozambique in Southern Africa was awarded debt relief in 1999 by the World Bank after it agreed to **privatize the water supply** in Maputo to SAUR [a giant French corporation]. These bullying tactics are emblematic of the manner in which the two global financial institutions force countries to sell off public industries to multinational corporations. Yet there is little evidence that privatization is the perfect solution for ailing state enterprises.
In fact, privatization often results in inferior services at higher rates. For-profit companies often cut services to poor and rural areas (because they are "unprofitable"), or raise fees to prices that the poor can no longer afford. In addition, when state enterprises are sold to foreign multinationals, the money collected from the local population flows out of the country, and the government is deprived of a steady revenue source."
Sell off the water supply in a poverty-ridden country to a foreign corporation?? First you can't afford the school fees (because the country just doesn't have the resources to provide free schooling), now you can't afford drinking water for your kids?
And that's where the corruption comes in too, of course, in the large-scale aid.
suzian, you're doing better than I am at understanding things ...
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