Today’s Good News: Foreign Aid Goes Directly To Poor
Here’s something incredibly simple yet brilliant. Aid agencies have started delivering cash directly to aid recipients in places like Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Pakistan. The Wall St. Journal highlights an item that originally appeared in Newsweek’s international edition. They say 10% of of the $3.2 billion spent on food aid last year was delivered in cash through pilot programs, apparently to test the concept. The benefits include: cash costs half as much to deliver as traditional aid, easily bypasses corrupt middlemen, and doesn’t disrupt local farming the way food shipments do. (I have never forgotten a story that appeared once in the Journal about shipments of international food aid moving down a road past sad local farmers, who now couldn’t sell their food because who wouldn’t rather have it free? How crazy is it to ship food thousands of miles rather than buy it locally?) They caution that cash (delivered by special mobile ATM’s or local banks) works best in areas with functioning markets, rather than in places that have been cut off by a flood or something like that. The Red Cross is one of the agencies involved.
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