International Aid Foundations have been raising money on false pretenses.
Jan 20th, 2013 by kevmason
David Damberger: What happens when an NGO admits failure
After watching a recent TedTalk by David Damberger, who talks about failed Aid Foundation and NGO projects, it brought up an interesting ethical dilemma on the approach to marketing donations for people in need. These aid foundations communicate a specific
need – fresh water for example – and state that by simple donations they will provide the impoverished communities with the resources they require. However, after a year of implementing these multi-thousand dollar projects, the systems no longer work due to lack of maintenance. Nonetheless, these organizations continue to market the need of these people, gaining donations to implement these ineffective solutions in order to continue to raise money. As a result, the people in these poverty nations are not gaining the help they need. In fact, they’re being given unsustainable solutions that hinder their ability to progress towards a healthier nation. The result is completely opposite of their value proposition to help these poor communities.
In the video, David talks about his own failed projects after he thought the program saved the community. As I watched him speak, you can hear the shakiness in his voice and emotion in his eyes as he admits his failure to the audience. After spending thousands of dollars from donators for a plan to help bring fresh water to a community in poverty, and seeing the devastating result after all of their hard work, the organizations continue to promote a need for donations in order to implement unsustainable systems. This is rather unsettling.
How can an International Aid Foundation, striving to provide a better life for impoverished nations, continue to market this so-called “unsolvable” problem by scamming people to donate in order to implement unsustainable programs? David suggests that in order to overcome this issue, Aid foundations should communicate their failures to the population in order to promote more sustainable solutions. It may not be as provocative (or “sexy”) to market to potential donators, but it provides information of how the systems implemented will actually be maintained in order to provide a more sustainable solution.
Either way, Aid foundations need to re-think their revenue/marketing strategy in order to keep promoting donations and actually provide sustainable solutions that will help build the impoverished nations towards success. Donators want their money to go towards a solution that will help a community for a lifetime, not for a year and a half.