Comments on: Emergency Aid and Community Development

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:44:55 +0000

That’s a good observation, Rachel. It’s one of the pitfalls of direct aid as opposed to community development. Sadly there probably isn’t much of a way around it except the push towards direct partnerships between organisations in affected areas. Sadly they can often be somewhat fragmented and so compete to offer the best to those they are committed to helping.

That sense of competition gets in the way of a lot of things even back at the fund raising level.

Steve Tollestrup (the Executive Director of TEAR Fund NZ) and I have lamented together about the competition that often occurs for the donor dollar.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:37:52 +0000

I’m all for supporting agencies like Tear Fund, but have had my eyes opened a little to some of the politics that go on around such agencies. Have begun reading ‘where soldiers fear to tread’ about a gentleman who volunteered for an organisation in a developing nation and he speaks quite frankly about the ‘competition’ between various food distribution programmes, even between World Vision and Unicef. V sad that politics and beaurocratic silliness get in the way of real help. (yes, this is a distribution programme and not a community development programme, so am on a slightly different tangent).

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:18:28 +0000

Thanks for the suggestion.

Are you able to pass on an email contact of someone who has read it and may be interested in writing a review for this site?

Just use the contact page at the top of the site to pass on any details.

By: h.e.g.

h.e.g. — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:14:50 +0000

This is a very helpful overview of the relief vs. development issue. Thank you!

There is a book by Bryant L. Myers called “Walking with the Poor” that I believe addresses these ideas from a Christian perspective (Myers has worked for World Vision). I haven’t read the book myself yet, unfortunately, but some of my friends read it and told me many times over how great it is. Anyway, just thought I’d toss that out there in case someone might find it helpful.

Thanks again.