Development Assistance: What's Beyond The "Feel Good" Factor?

Over 15 years ago, I took a decision to steer my professional life away from the forces that characterized the commercial world of advertising, radio, television and film I had so passionately been working for until then.

I didn't like the personal and intellectual price that needed to be paid in exchange for very large amounts of money.

Photo credit: Natural History Museum in Washington DC - Gregory John Zamets

The intensity and the rush was all about doing something for someone else, while stomping on principles of design, efficiency and communication to please and serve opportunity and whims greater than one could ever control.

And so, one day, I decided to change and to give my talent out to those organizations and institutions that worked for a greater good. Education, research, development, public awareness, aid.

Though this was a much less glamorous and cutting-edge work than the one I had been doing for commercial firms, it felt great, in my mind, to contribute in some form or other to the well-being and improvement of my fellow brothers on this planet.

 

 

And so I did, from 1989 until today. I have helped, designed and coordinated a few challening communication projects for organizations like the UN, the World Bank Institute, FAO, IFAD, The World Food Programme, and several other ones.

It has been good work, I must say.

But only until I kept being an obedient newspaper reader and TV news watcher.

Once I stopped taking things coming from mainstream media and news agencies as "the truth", I started to see things I had not ever considered before and begun to understand that to do good and to enable change, you have to go out and do it yourself in some way or another.

The larger the organization, and the more centralized, the easier to loose focus, efficiency and the ability to have a real communication exchange with those who are supposedly being helped.

Too many layers involved, too few people having to decide where and how large amounts of money are being spent, too much distance with the reality purposedly being served.

And so I slowly awakened. I realized that even the largest and most philanthropic organizations may not always be there to do good to our brothers and sisters. Some of them are there to promote an agenda of investment interests, some others are there to exploit secondary opportunities while providing ineffective help in other areas, many waste large amounts without needing to remain accountable to the people of the world who are financially supporting such crazy spending, some just don't care. They have a budget and they spend it.

Nonetheless, if you ask most people, working with foreign aid and "development" organizations, as they more often referred to, does come with a great "feel-good" factor.

You do feel that you are contributing to the economic well-being of the poorest people around the world. To the betterment of something larger than your own reality. And even if only a small percentage of your money could go out to help those poor people out there, you'd feel good that you did something to help this world be a better place.

Or would you?

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