Sustainability and Charitable Donations

Is was re-reading some of my journals from 10 years ago when I visited some refugee centers in Johannesburg, and they reminded me of some thoughts that I've had recently about some charitable donations, as well. We are often given a barrage of pleas for financial help for the poor, whether it is local or in another country, financial help that will be spent on food, clothing, medical supplies, and schooling. Often times, over 95% of the donations actually make it to the recipients. What has happened, through, in many cases is that the recipients have come to think of themselves as poor and perpetually in need of donations in order to survive. The problem with this is that it is not a sustainable plan. With some creativity, leadership, and education, I believe that most if not all of these situations can be turned around into short term projects that kick start systems and programs that enable the recipients to provide for themselves. Many of these kick starter projects can be completed in less than 1 year, some might take as long as 5 years. Once these kick starter projects are completed, the recipients have the potential to contribute significantly to the the world and to the kingdom of heaven on earth.

The alternative to this that I propose is to have a set of criteria for these programs and have them audited for following the criteria. The criteria could be something like this:

• limited time (max 5 years) and a dollar cap on donations and NGO presence in the program
• approved plan for how the program will build to self-sufficiency after the donations stop
• production of goods as a community
• education of recipients
• production of communities own food and water filtration strongly encouraged
• environmental friendliness encouraged
• sanitation and housing can expand and be provided by recipients
• follow appropriate technology guidelines, e.g. E.F. Schumacher
• feedback mechanism in place for soliciting and implementing improvements

As an example, let's take a look at the refugee situation in South Africa 10 years ago. Refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and from southern Sudan were streaming into South Africa, and the South African government allowed them to enter and stay. However, the government did not provide any funding to pay for food or shelter for these refugees, which was also appropriate. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) took on the responsibility and many of these NGOs tried to incorporate education into their programs. The programs were not coordinated between NGOs, and each NGO was had staff attempting to raise funds (compete for funds in some cases) from the United States, the United Nations, and from Europe.

Using the alternative methodology proposed above, an NGO could draft plans for new villages of refugees in South Africa, built by the refugees who are fed for the first year with moneys from donations, and who in turn create an extensive organic farm that provides all of the food that the community needs. Each village would take care of its own recycling and composting, creating no landfills. Each village could focus on a particular craft, such as leather work, wood carving, hand-made clothing, or the like, and setup the [low tech] equipment for producing these crafts. The NGO could setup the initial agreements for foreign trade of these crafts to be sold in the host country and in other countries. The NGO could then pull out of the villages within 2 years, after ensuring that leadership is developed from among the refugees and that everything is working well.