The sad thing about poor countries

[jhu]

Unless a natural disaster hits, no one cares about them. Haiti was a shitty place before the earthquake and most people didn't care at all. Now we're all bent out of shape trying to help them out. That's great and all, but why didn't anybody do something before? And what about other countries like Sudan or Sierra Leone?

 

[LordMorpheus]

Plenty of people care and do things about them. If you are interested in becoming one of them, start reading up on the topic. Without experience, the most good you can do is to donate money to organizations that you think are trustworthy and have reasonable plans and goals.

I've got a chunk of money lent to various people trying to start / expand businesses in their countries through Kiva (www.kiva.org), which is a good place to start as you can get in with as little as 25 or so dollars. If you want to funnel your money to Haiti, specifically, look into donating to the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, or similar organizations.

The fact that you never gave a damn about the developing world before this earthquake nailed Haiti doesn't mean that nobody did. Also, the sad truth is that many places on this earth are in such bad shape that nothing short of a major government action has the capability to unfuck them in the near future. People do what they can.

 

[Dumac]

Try visiting some third world countries. It is a lot easier to care about a place when you've been there.

 

[Kalmah]

Instead of giving these countries fish.. why don't people teach them how to fish?

 

[rudder]

Unless a natural disaster hits, no one cares about them. Haiti was a shitty place before the earthquake and most people didn't care at all. Now we're all bent out of shape trying to help them out. That's great and all, but why didn't anybody do something before? And what about other countries like Sudan or Sierra Leone?

Short of military action how do yo propose we can send aid to a place like Somalia? Any aid will get intercepted by the group in power. In countries that actually have governments usually the ruling regime will get the benefit of the aid.

Haiti has been ruled by one corrupt regime after another.

 

[Newbian]

Instead of giving these countries fish.. why don't people teach them how to fish?

The problem is it's Haiti and even if you were able to teach the few that would want to get taught the corruption would be so bad the moment the people catch fish other people would kill them and take the fish.

 

[LordMorpheus]

Instead of giving these countries fish.. why don't people teach them how to fish?

All the major NGO's are attempting to do the latter (except of course in emergency situations like Haiti at the moment) but it's not an easy problem. Kiva is trying to accomplish it by lending, not giving, money to local entrepreneurs so they can build the economy and create jobs from the ground up. How well does it work? I really have no idea, but it seems like a good idea to me.

Groups like engineers without borders install mostly infrastructure improvements in developing countries, but most of their work is spent ensuring that the local population takes ownership of the improvements so they won't fall into disrepair as soon as ewb finishes and pulls out.

Again, the sad truth is that this achieving the "teach people how to fish" problem is unsolved, but most reputable NGOs are working on it rather than the "giving people fish" problem.

 

[Hacp]

Teach someone to fish, they'll eat once a day.
Teach someone to shoot, they'll eat all day.

 

[spacejamz]

That's great and all, but why didn't anybody do something before?

why don't you do some research first?

Here is a list for you:

Find out how much foreign aid Haiti receives annually from other countries before the earthquake.

Find out how much of their 'debt' to the countries and institutions (IMF, World Bank) was cancelled last year.

Where did these billions of dollars (between 1990 - today) go? Why didn't anyone ask these questions before the earthquake hit? maybe if this money was spent properly, Haiti would have had a better infrastructure to deal with this disaster...

There is probably a lot of information explaining why Haiti is in the shape it is in even after all of this monetary help was given to the country here:

http://www.napawash.org/haiti_final.pdf

Edit: Another article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100115/ap_on_go_ot/us_haiti_following_the_money

From the article:

• U.S. government auditors pulled out of the country years ago after concerns over kidnappings and other crimes scuttled their efforts to monitor Haiti's spending of $45 million in U.S. aid after storms there killed thousands.
• Just last month, a private group, the Heritage Foundation for Haiti, urged Haiti's government to complete an audit of a $197 million emergency disaster program to respond to corruption allegations over how the money was handled
• Apart from earthquake relief, senators working on the next annual foreign assistance budget have proposed at least $282 million for Haiti; the House proposal would provide at least $165 million.
• At least $700 million more was pledged to Haiti by governments, international givers and charities at an April 2009 donors conference

 

[IGBT]

cry me a river. Haiti was getting millions from the US tax payer year after year. WTF did they do with it all??

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Its not our fault other countries are shitholes.

 

[RallyMaster]

cry me a river. Haiti was getting millions from the US tax payer year after year. WTF did they do with it all??

Crack cocaine, yo.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Unless a natural disaster hits, no one cares about them. Haiti was a shitty place before the earthquake and most people didn't care at all. Now we're all bent out of shape trying to help them out. That's great and all, but why didn't anybody do something before? And what about other countries like Sudan or Sierra Leone?

Did you know that there were over 45,000 US citizens in Haiti alone doing that very thing before the earthquake?