Subject: Doing Bad by Doing Good Tue Mar 02, 2010 11:04 pm
When Kent M. Keith was a Cub Scout in the 1950s, he had a great urge to do good deeds and pile up merit badges. Was it altruism? Ambition? A chance to feel better about himself? Was he really making a difference?
One day, his father set him straight. "Kent," he said, "don't help the old lady cross the street unless she wants to go."
Kent Keith, now 61, is CEO of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, a nonprofit organization based in Westfield, Ind., that trains and advises groups and individuals on practical and ethical ways of helping others.
Most of us want to be effective, he says, "to make the world better. But before you help people, you have to ask them, 'What do you need? What do you want?'"
Every day, we see reminders of the limitations, and even the dangers, of good intentions. In Haiti, U.S. missionaries who said they only wanted to save orphaned children ended up arrested on child-trafficking charges. In Asian countries hit by the 2004 tsunami, residents still shake their heads over the warehouses filled with unusable donations, including winter coats and stiletto shoes. And earthquake-ravaged Chile is sure to receive its share of "useless aid" in the days ahead.
Closer to home, good intentions are often greeted cynically, or with indifference. In Hollywood, celebrities recently gathered to again sing "We Are the World," and much of the world yawned in response.
In Chicago's City Hall, waterless urinals in a men's room were touted for saving 50,000 gallons of water a year per urinal. But without enough water per flush, the copper pipes got corroded and urine collected in the restroom wall. The smell of urine spread through City Council chambers. Last month, amid snickering, the well-meaning conservation effort was abandoned, and regular urinals were reinstalled.
The steady procession of such stories would have us believing the old axiom that "no good deed goes unpunished." How can we better calibrate good intentions in our own lives?
The answer, from activists and academics who study the human impulse, is blunt. Throw out any ideas of winning praise for your work—be honest, most of us want to be stroked—and build up some armor to take hits. A growing field of organizations has sprung up to advise people looking to donate, time or money, to help potential donors achieve these steps.
"Throw away your assumptions about what people need," advises Tori Hogan, a 27-year-old activist who has traveled the world studying the effectiveness of aid programs. Beyond Good Intentions, the Cambridge, Mass.-based charity-watchdog organization she founded, posts videos on its Web site that evaluate aid projects.
Ms. Hogan tells of going to a village in Peru where an aid group brought in tourists to help build public toilets. The group ran out of money and time, the tourists ended their volunteering vacations, and the toilets were never completed. The aid group had thought access to restroom facilities was needed to boost living standards, Ms. Hogan says. "But when I asked people in the community what they wanted, they said, 'What we really needed was irrigation, and to have our bridge fixed, so we could take our goods to market.'"
The never-completed toilets were gaping holes that had to be covered. Villagers feared their children would fall in.
Such failed efforts are often repeated across the developing world, and some aid workers resent it when Ms. Hogan points them out. Too bad, she says. As she sees it, it is irresponsible to believe that as long as we mean well, the details will figure themselves out. It's no excuse to say: "Well, at least my heart was in the right place."
It isn't always true that any help is better than no help. "We see a lot of people coming to orphanages, attaching to kids, and they're gone in a week," says Ms. Hogan.
In one of the Beyond Good Intentions videos, a woman who runs an orphanage in Argentina explains that when these short-term volunteers say goodbye, the orphans "are left feeling empty." Now, as soon as volunteers arrive, wary orphans often ask, "How long are you here for?" Says Ms. Hogan: "They're tired of having their hearts broken." Volunteer Tutors
Youth and mentoring programs in the U.S. have the same issues. In Swarthmore, Pa., students at Swarthmore College are asked not to serve as volunteer tutors for disadvantaged kids unless they're willing to make a "long term" commitment of at least one semester.
If you're a needy child, "it may be better to have no relationship with these [collegiate] role models than to have a relationship you can't count on," says Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory and social action at the college.
Of course, it isn't just people in need who can fall victim to good intentions. Do-gooders face hazards of their own. "You're vulnerable to being exploited. But it's a risk worth taking," says Dr. Schwartz.
Talk to those who have seen firsthand that "no good deed goes unpunished," and they often agree.
In San Antonio, Jon Hansbrough received a parking ticket last year while briefly parked in a commercial loading zone. A church volunteer, he was delivering meals for a homeless shelter. He says the officer who issued the ticket told him he should have parked down the block and somehow carted the 500 pounds of food to the shelter.
At first, Mr. Hansbrough, a 66-year-old disabled veteran, was upset, and called on fellow parishioners "to pray that public officials will develop compassion for the homeless and tolerance for those who feed them." Being 'Punished'
But on reflection, he chose not to dwell on the fact that he was "punished" while doing good. Instead, he now stays with his sport-utility vehicle in case an officer shows up, while some of the homeless men quickly unload the food. "I'm answering to a higher calling," he says.
Michael Grayson, who survived a more serious example of being "punished" for a good deed, feels the same way. Last December, the 51-year-old carpenter from Jacksonville, Fla., stopped along a roadway to help an 87-year-old woman whose car wouldn't start.
Mr. Grayson slid underneath her car, got it running by jumping the starter, but didn't realize the woman had left the car in drive. The car began to move and both the front and back tires rolled across him, crushing multiple bones. He has no insurance, and his medical bills now stand at $148,000. Medicaid and the woman's auto insurance have covered only a fraction of that amount, and his doctors expect him to be in a wheelchair until June.
Still, Mr. Grayson says he has no regrets about helping that woman, and no hard feelings toward her. The lesson for him isn't that no good deed goes unpunished. Rather, he says, the lesson is to be more careful. "I should have checked that the car was in park, and I should have blocked the tires before getting under the car," he says.
He hopes his predicament won't dissuade anyone from following through on good intentions. "Do all you can for other people," he says. "That's what makes the world go round."
Before You Decide to Save the World
* Throw away your assumptions about what you think people need. * Ask recipients what they think might work. * Focus on ideas that may be more effective than the obvious project. * Be willing to be anonymous.
Subject: Re: Doing Bad by Doing Good Wed Mar 03, 2010 8:09 pm
Global Aid Hurts Haitian Businesses
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Business for Ilia Alsene, one of Haiti's ubiquitous "marchands"—or merchants—who sell food and beverages at curbside stalls here, is a lot worse since the country's devastating earthquake. But Ms. Alsene doesn't blame the quake so much as the international relief effort that followed.
"I have fewer customers now because they are handing out free food down the street," says the 52-year-old, pointing to the nearby Champs de Mars plaza where aid organizations regularly hand out food to tens of thousands of people camped there in tents.
After the Jan. 12 quake, which killed as many as 300,000 people, the world launched a massive relief effort to bring food, water, medicine and other supplies to needy Haitians. The U.S. alone has spent more than $665 million, official figures show.
But only a tiny fraction of that money is being spent in Haiti, buying goods from local businesses. Worse, the aid is having the unintended consequence of making life harder for many businesses here, because of competition from free goods brought in by relief agencies. The damage to Haitian companies is making it harder for them to get back on their feet and create the jobs the country needs for a lasting recovery.
U.S. officials acknowledge that the aid effort has bypassed local businesses, but say the scope of the disaster made getting relief supplies in quickly a priority. They also say they will be buying more products from Haiti as the relief effort shifts to longer-term rebuilding.
Alex Zamor's drinking-water factory is operating again at near full capacity after suffering damage from the earthquake. But he still hasn't rehired 200 employees at the factory because sales are so weak. He blames free water handed out by the relief effort.
"Of course we welcome the relief, but nobody wants to buy water if there's free water on the streets," he says. Mr. Zamor says international relief agencies should be sourcing more of their products for the relief effort from Haiti itself. "We should be helping Haitian companies instead of companies in Florida," he says.
In most disaster relief, only a tiny fraction of aid money goes through the local government. And as little as 5% of the budgets of humanitarian agencies is spent locally in the countries they help, according to Peace Dividend Trust, a Canadian nongovernmental organization.
"Every dollar that is spent locally is a dollar spent twice, because it will help create the jobs that Haiti needs to recover," says Marlene Otis, the Haiti country director for Peace Dividend Trust.
Tom Adamson, a transplanted Canadian, runs one of only two mattress companies in Haiti. Three of his 10 retail stores around the country were destroyed, and his factory suffered minor damage. But he says the biggest effect from the quake has been increased competition.
In the weeks after the temblor, a mattress company in the Dominican Republic sent 10,000 foam mattresses for the relief effort, getting import duties at the border waived. He and U.S. officials say nearly all relief supplies don't get charged import taxes. Meanwhile, Mr. Adamson's mattress company has a container of chemicals used to make foam mattresses stuck for months in Haitian customs, where is still being asked to pay import taxes.
"Things like this make it very hard for me to compete," he says.
Subject: Re: Doing Bad by Doing Good Wed Mar 03, 2010 10:47 pm
Live Aid Famine Cash Bought Guns, Not Grain
Amid an ongoing global effort to raise funds for earthquake-stricken Haiti, new allegations surfaced today that millions of dollars raised by the 1985 Live Aid concerts for the victims of the Ethiopian famine were actually spent on weapons. The charges offer a timely reminder that collecting money is the easy part of any relief effort; making sure it gets to the right people is often far more complex.
Former Ethiopian rebel leaders have told the BBC that they siphoned off hundreds of millions of aid dollars to buy guns. Some of the diverted funds allegedly came directly from Western governments, and some from money raised in ticket sales at the twin concerts in London and Philadelphia. A 1985 CIA assessment of the country uncovered by the broadcaster also acknowledges that money ending up in militants' coffers. "Some funds that insurgent organizations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes," it said.
Subject: Doing Bad by Doing Good 
Tue Mar 02, 2010 11:04 pm
