July 6, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Why do people get so offended by criticism of international aid?
Tori Hogan, a filmmaker who recently made a documentary about the effectiveness of overseas development projects, asks this question and writes that two sets of people — donors, especially ones who contribute small amounts of money, and aid workers — are particularly defensive.
On Social Edge, a Web site operated by the Skoll Foundation, she says that donors are “desperately trying to convince themselves that their good intentions and willingness to want to help is enough,” while aid workers feel like her film is “questioning the validity of their life’s work.”
She argues that foreign assistance programs need to foster a “culture of critical reflection” to improve, but aid recipients themselves may have to build such an effort.
To be sure, there appears to be growing number of people and programs trying to provide such feedback.
Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born and Oxford-trained economist, has become a leading critic with her book Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa.
Organizations like the Fritz Institute, a nonprofit research group in San Francisco, have started to survey the people who have received disaster relief in Asia and elsewhere to find out their perception of how aid was provided.
And in a similar fashion, grant makers, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have started to explore how to receive and act on feedback from the beneficiaries of their giving. While Gates is trying this approach with its domestic programs, it may try to expand the project to overseas grant making.
What do you think? Do donors and aid workers usually respond to criticism poorly? Click on the comment button below to share your views.
