The Trouble with "Aid", Nate's Exit.

A community self-help group managing their money.  In a typical development project of US$120,184, $24,000 or just 20% was allocated in the form of direct money to beneficiaries. In the end they received less; one of the 8 groups received nothing at all.

In my blog last week, I referred to the decision of a fellow longtime "Aid" worker to give up in frustration. Was he sensing something now allowed in Aid circles (Failure?) Nate invited me to give a guest-post to go with his writings.  Here it is, as posted on his site.   If you would like a sound-track as you read, try "You really got a hold on me".

No good winking at a Sheila in the dark!

Most readers will have no idea what this means, least of all its relevance to “Life after Aid”.

Foreign Aid – Is it just an illusion?

This blog is one in a series around the theme of "Smarter Aid". 

The original blog has now passed 50,000 viewings.

Just down the A1 road from me, in Morpeth Northumberland, lives magician David.  But for fate and circumstance, he might have trodden the same path as Nate and myself, in to the equally mysterious world of aid and development.

I can’t help thinking that there are many parallels between his craft and ours.

Where there’s muck, there’s brass!

Where there’s muck, there’s brass!

This is a Yorkshire English saying that says you will find money in dirt.  Wherever you have men with spades or with JCBs, you’ll see them forever digging holes.

Bizarrely, at times, the pastime has been the answer to the world’s economic woes.

And then, once we have all that dirt dug up and piled up what do we do with it, and the hole left?

Do we create a modern art-work?

Or do we create a self-perpetuating cycle of self-harm as in today’s Cambodia?

Us and Them! Them or Us?

Image: Pubfront July 2015 http://www.northumberlandarms.co.uk/ @klimek78

Right to bear arms or to bare arms?

Us and Them!  Them or Us?

The sense of belonging is a natural human instinct; one that is cultivated throughout life, but it can have its drawbacks, and even dangers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f6hbp

Those dangers rest in every country, in every walk of life, and we need to trace their roots.  To do so, I must try here to emulate the great Alistair Cooke, with a soliloquy that if it cannot match his style, it can ramble in much the same way to get to one vital point he always wanted to leave with his vast audience.

My point here is that danger begins when "us and them" becomes "them or us!"

Lucy v Sasha. Who is right? Ask Doris!

http://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/cartoon-girls-fighting.html

This is my third and final blog about St Helena, at least for a while.  I must turn my attention to more pressing issues and ones that I can maybe influence.  A report today in the Guardian shows how futile trying to change DfID can be, but at least one Ethiopian farmer succeeded.  So there is hope for a brave Saint!

I suspect that the farmer’s success will be just one more rare exception to the rule.  With donors like DfID one quote comes to mind attributed, some believe wrongly, to Albert Einstein:

“Insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results?”

The Buck Rests Here!

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/buckstop.htm

Last week my attention returned to Saint Helena, hence the blog.  However that led to me dropping in to the local papers to discover that the long-awaited, eagerly-sought Wass enquiry in to alleged child abuse had been conveniently released just before Christmas.  Funny how bad news appears when everyone’s attention may be elsewhere?

Well to everyone's relief, at least those who have Saint Helena’s best interests at heart, the enquiry cleared it of the worst things the UK tabloid press and some “Non-well-wishers” had accused it of. Sasha Wass's report did go in to considerable detail about the island’s governance – the subject that concerns me – hence this follow-up blog.  Both local newspapers had given a lot of coverage of the findings, but they and the Island, in my view could do with suggestions on “Where to go from here”.

I love to go a-wandering

Backpackers in Phnom Penh + Basil George "Wannabe"?*

Please click on the link; switch on your speakers, and sing along!

The Happy Wanderer

I love to go a-wandering,

Along the mountain track,

And as I go, I love to sing,

My knapsack on my back.