SoNickSays...

Hello people of WF,

Every year England has events like Comic Relief and Red Nose Day, where the charities raise at least £10 million to go to places like Africa and other countries with a lot of poverty. What I don't understand, however, is after about £100 million (roughly) a year these places still have the same major problems.

I myself wondering whether out of the £67,726,409 Red Nose Day raised last year, the places that they were 'raising money for' even received £1 million.

I remember being told in school that 20p in our currency will feed a family for a day. If this is true, then £1.40 will feed them for a week, and about £80 for a year. So how come every year we pay about £100,000,000 (probably a lot more) to feed them, shouldn't they be fed by now? Why are people still demanding we donate all our money to the people worse off then us when they should be fine after about £1 billion (over the years) from us, and probably an equal amount from a few other countries.
They would have been able to feed families, build companies for better, high paying jobs, and it's huge area would allow a lot of companies etc. so not too many people should be completely out of work.

So why oh why are we encouraged, almost every day, to donate every bit of money we feel when we stick our hands in our pockets to a 'better cause'.
Either the charities and the government just aren't paying up to the puppy dog eyes of the hungry children, or the children are fine but someone is guzzling all that money.

Where the hell does it all go?

So that's my question.

I'd love to hear your views.

Nick

A-L

That is a good question that I have been pondering myself, and I have come to the conclusion that a lot of the money meant for "charity" doesn't go towards charity at all unless closely monitored. I think a lot of this money goes into the hands of the governments who are supposed to help out their people but instead spend the money on themselves. There is always a money trail that can be followed, and if you follow it long enough you'll get your answer, though I think that it will be a very disappointing one. Most people give and think that their money automatically goes to the right people, and is then distributed to various programs to help the needy. But it isn't. The money is absorbed into the economy, but it rarely benefits the people themselves. I think that only by closely monitoring where our money goes can this problem be solved.

JoannaMac

Nick, you speak as if aid money should be enough to solve the problem of world poverty. A more important question than "Where does aid money go?" would be "Why does so much of the world having trouble feeding itself?"

Aid money is a mere drop in the bucket, and isn't a real solution anyway.

Go and do some reading about the causes of Third world debt.

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JoannaMac

Also, this is facetious. You know the children aren't fine. You've over simplified the situation saying that if the money got through like it should, there'd be no poverty, which is ridiculous.

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Non Serviam

1) Kleptocracy, and
2) Making interest payments.

Basically, from a third world country's point of view, it works like this:

First, a new government gets elected. This new government makes plenty of promises and borrows some money from the West to fund them.

Three years later, the government's gone, the ministers are nowhere to be found, the promised improvements for everyone haven't appeared, and the money's mysteriously vanished too.

But the country still owes the money, so the next government hikes taxes. And then makes promises it can't keep, so it borrows a bit more...

... until we're in a world where the poorest African countries spend £10 on debt repayment for every £2 they spend on healthcare. And they've got T-55 tanks and plenty of soldiers armed with M-16's, but they're still a bit short on clean running water.

And then people like Comic Relief come along and pay for the improvements the government should have paid for with the money it borrowed--thereby empowering the government to continue stealing from the people, at the same time as creating more and more dependency on the West.

Which isn't to say "Don't give to Comic Relief". It's the only way someone like you can get help to these people. It just illustrates the structural problems of our financial relationship with third world countries.

Basically out governments are selling them weapons we invented, at prices we set, using money we lent them, before they've managed to start building railways and water pipelines and hospitals.

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spider8

I remember a Sun article a couple of years ago complaining that a Birmingham council job, a 'Lesbian Co-ordinator' for £22K p.a. had on the advert 'This position is funded by Children In Need. Now of course people who donate will think that their money's going to children but it isn't always. Okay, it's still a 'cause' but it's deception. There was another charity, I think the World Wildlife Fund, that a programme exposed as only having 4p in the pound going to save animals. The rest was used in keeping the charity going as an organisation, huge outlays. One further point about Africa. It is rife with desease, and especially aids. The drugs are extremely expensive a lot of poor Westerners can't afford them. I know our own (british) National Health Service give people cheap, worse drugs to save money. I think the West should think very carefully about whether we want third world countries to have our car usage, production strengths, fridges, aerosols etc. Morally we would but logically we wouldn't.

Neo

Charity begins at home. I don't see a single penny of that money helping those in the UK.

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BOURBON

I don't like that phrase. It represents everything I detest in the world of smug. How is a needy person who is geographically closer to you of more value than one in greater need but further away? 'Our money is being wasted' sounds so much more palatable than 'it's mine and they're not having it', but it comes from the same world view.

Neo

Because people IN THE UK give their money to charities while people ALSO IN THE UK starve and die in freezing poverty while no-one cares because countries who murdered their way to independence from the UK get handouts. It's pathetic.

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Non Serviam

The people at the top don't, anyway. It's hardly the starving kids' fault.

Best thing to do is let them take the consequences (i.e. losses) of getting involved.

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sam_kempton

The 'politicians' of these countries dont starve, neither do the warlords and tyrants.
Its amazing that while the general population is starving the goverment and army are suckling like piglets from donations.
third world countries owe the G8 countries vast amounts of money due to war-mongering and a few fat men that are riding the gravy train.
What makes this worse is that the heads of most charities get a nice salary, as do there P.A's and their P.A's secretary ect, ect.
This isnt saying dont donate money to good causes, please do, but there are other ways to help that dont include paying to feed the wealthy.

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seigfried007

Overhead on big charities is outrageous and governments and wars steal from the given cash and resources and, in many cases, deny the commoners access to aid.

Give all you want to Burma and those poor African nations, but very little will actually get to the people you intend for it to (I say this knowing that very little of what I've given to said causes and nations has done any good).

When it comes down to it, those powers can't manage people or resources well enough to do much of anything and the peoples have been ruled by violence and fear so much that it's simply a part of life for them (and thus, a very difficult cycle to break).

Anyone hear remember the cyclone that hit Burma and how the junta denied the UN and all that aid access to the country?

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AA

Why is that bad? People who run successful non-profit organizations should be rewarded for running successful non-profit organizations? They work hard, they run the organization well and they get more donations for it. Having a decent salary to reward building and maintaining a complex charitable organization isn't a crime.

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BOURBON

Call me an idealist, but I'd like to live in a world where people give a shit about other people's suffering. If one penny in every pound I give puts food in a starving mouth while the idiot politicians sort themselves out, then it's a pound well-spent.

Writ-with-Hand

Good post.