Article from "The Marketplace" January February 2010, which is an excerpt from the book "The Poor Will Be Glad" by Peter Greer
After the genocide [in Rwanda], Jean seized an opportunity to begin a small poultry business to provide his neighborhood with eggs. He managed to scrape together funds to purchase several fowl, and his business grew. Later, a church in America "adopted" the village where Jean lived and worked. The church also imported eggs from a neighboring community and gave them away. Suddenly, this one village was flooded with surplus eggs. It is not difficult to imagine what happened to Jean's business: people went first to collect free eggs and bought Jean's eggs only when the supply for eggs was depleted. The market price for eggs plummeted in Jean's village and, as a result, Jean was forced to sell his productive assets, his chickens.
The next year, after Jean had left the poultry business, the church that had supplied the free eggs turned its attention to another disaster in another part of the world. Jean's community had no capacity to produce eggs locally and was forced to import eggs from a neighboring town. The cost of these eggs was higher than the eggs Jean had sold, so both Jean and his village were hurt economically by the good intentions of one American church.
I thought it was an interesting read. It goes to show the difference a temporary and a permanent fix can make on a village.
Again, if you'd like to help make a permanent fix to a village for generations, please donate to help build the gravity fed water system in the Kebele of Southern Ethiopia. Each donation is tripled, and each donation is also tax deductible. For more information, please contact us. We are still about $22,000.00 short from reaching our goal.
After the genocide [in Rwanda], Jean seized an opportunity to begin a small poultry business to provide his neighborhood with eggs. He managed to scrape together funds to purchase several fowl, and his business grew. Later, a church in America "adopted" the village where Jean lived and worked. The church also imported eggs from a neighboring community and gave them away. Suddenly, this one village was flooded with surplus eggs. It is not difficult to imagine what happened to Jean's business: people went first to collect free eggs and bought Jean's eggs only when the supply for eggs was depleted. The market price for eggs plummeted in Jean's village and, as a result, Jean was forced to sell his productive assets, his chickens.
The next year, after Jean had left the poultry business, the church that had supplied the free eggs turned its attention to another disaster in another part of the world. Jean's community had no capacity to produce eggs locally and was forced to import eggs from a neighboring town. The cost of these eggs was higher than the eggs Jean had sold, so both Jean and his village were hurt economically by the good intentions of one American church.
I thought it was an interesting read. It goes to show the difference a temporary and a permanent fix can make on a village.
Again, if you'd like to help make a permanent fix to a village for generations, please donate to help build the gravity fed water system in the Kebele of Southern Ethiopia. Each donation is tripled, and each donation is also tax deductible. For more information, please contact us. We are still about $22,000.00 short from reaching our goal.
2 comments:
Ok, so this is a long comment/ post.
I totally agree with the need for international aid to be sustainable.
When we were traveling in Africa, we met the mayor of Lusaka and his wife at a pub in Zambia. She had been the minister of health for Zambia, and she had some very strong opinions on international aid.
She described a scenario in a rural village that had occurred in the past, where many of the children would contract polio and die from the disease. The families in the village, although devastated by this, knew how to deal with the implications of the disease. She said that a well meaning western aid group came in and started providing immunizations. They stayed for a few years, and during this time immunized the village. Then, they left. Once they had left, polio struck again and the village, which had once been able to deal with the loss and devastation of the disease no longer knew how to cope. She felt that the vaccination campaign had done more bad than good.
I don't know if this was a true situation, or a hypothetical one..,
And although I don't agree with everything she was saying I really did see her point on the ethics of international aid or cross cultural aid.
It was a huge "aha" moment for me.
The issue of providing aid that actually makes a difference for the community is so important! Good post!
I just tagged you in a stupid but kind of fun blog game. check it out.
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