Here is a news item that makes sense to me.  “There’s a charity called GiveDirectly that just gives money to poor people in Kenya.  There are no strings attached.  People can spend the money on whatever they want, and they never have to pay it back.  The idea behind this is straight out of Econ 101:  Poor people know what they need, and if you give them money, they can buy it.”  I’ve seen similar sentiments in other places.  There is a saying:  “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”  GiveDirectly goes beyond that:  “Give a man [or woman] the money and he’ll decide to fish, or maybe to sell bait, repair boats, start a restaurant, or make fish-scale jewelry.”

What a great idea. Sure, some people will make poor choices, but there are many poor choices in our current system of “charity”. Government aid often comes with strings limiting what can be purchased from which companies, turning aid into corporate welfare. Many charities want to manipulate people with their aid, changing how they live, farm, or raise their families. Too often, charity seems to let the recipient eat for a day and nothing more.
“GiveDirectly uses a Kenyan mobile money system that makes it cheap and easy to send money to anyone with a cell phone. The group gives cheap phones to people who don’t already have them.” This sounds like a system that would be easy to audit and control. Aid that arrives as cargos of food or supplies or suitcases of cash can be diverted by kleptocracies. And even if the aid arrives as it was intended, a lot of money was spent to move it around the world.
If you want to help people, it makes sense you should start by treating them with respect, by trusting them, and by leaving them independent instead of awaiting the next aid truck. This revolutionary idea may disrupt an entire aid “industry”. We certainly still need immediate aid for people hit by disasters like hurricanes or wars. But for long-term attempts to improve poor people’s lives, GiveDirectly may have the best idea. I’ll look forward to hearing the outcome over the next several years.