Been reading Paul Theroux's "Dark Star", a travelogue of Africa, and it's sobering, including where philanthropy is concerned. He writes:
..This [is] the age of charity in Africa, where business of philanthropy was paramount, studied as closely as the coffee harvest or a hydroelectric project. Now a complex infrastructure was devoted to what had become ineradicable miseries: famine, displacement, poverty, illiteracy, AIDS, the ravages of war. Name an African problem and an agency or a charity existed to deal with it. But that did not mean a solution was produced. Charities and aid programs seemed to turn African problems into permanent conditions that were bigger and messier.
Pearl Jam has a line in one of their songs that goes, "you won the lottery / just by being born". That might be applied in multiple ways but Vedder was talking about the sheer fortunateness of being born in the U.S., at least from a material standpoint. I've long thought the best thing to do with the charity dollar is, after providing for the local church, giving to something like Catholic Relief Services, which spends the bulk of their money outside the U.S.. But then I read something like the above and wonder. Can charity become uncharitable? Maybe "Habitat for Humanity" is a better option because it provides something long-lasting without corrupting - since welfare arguably ruined many U.S. families by the culture of dependency being passed down generationally. On the other hand, it's necessary to have people on the ground and in place in time of crisis such as a famine.
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