Thank you so much Dave for writing this article. This issue literally keeps me awake at night.

I work for World Vision and I absolutely love and respect the organization and its work. Although I have always worked in marketing , I think its vital to understand the complexities of the work we do. The more I learn, the more complex I understand the work to be and the more I am thankful for our knowledgeable staff and levels of accountability. After seeing the work in Zambia, I have tremendous respect for the staff on the ground and the people we are there to serve.

This is not something amateurs should be meddling in but unfortunately starting your own non-profit is the new "starting your own business".It is absolutely petrifying to me that independants are starting nonprofits, especially the often open access some are giving donors to vunerable children. They are also fostering a mentality of donor needs before community desires.

What keeps me awake at night is trying to keep World Vision relevant and explain these complexities to donors. Donors are compelled to new projects/orgs/individuals because of the direct relationship and impact they are offering. Its my job to try and ensure World Vision is a better bridge - I just hope we can catch up.

Please continue to write about this!

thank you thank you thank you

@RichendaG

Whoa, you make just as many errors & assumptions as you accuse Kristoff of making. Frankly, I find your arguments weak.

First of all, sometimes the 'amateurs' who have lived in an area for many years DO know better than the development 'experts'. Often, these people have made a decision to live in that community, to dedicate their lives and often live at the same level as the local people. Believe me, the locals know this. It's the visiting development experts they mistrust. These DIY'ers have often learned the hard way what is effective, even if it goes against their own values or beliefs. Witness Catholic priests and nuns that have spent 30 years in a poor place, and quietly offer birth control.

The Play Pump example you spoke of was not set up by a DIY'er, it was set up by an S.A. billboard advertising exec, possibly white and probably a city dweller.

And how about Greg Mortenson, and his schools? He's making inroads into fundamentalism Islamic areas and has even managed to get local Taliban on side. He's so experienced about local conditions that he's been brought in to consult the US Armed Forces about conditions on the ground, and how to address them. A development expert? No, a former male nurse.

I work in maternal health in Indonesia. I've found development 'experts' to be surprisingly ignorant of the consequences of their often-misplaced programs on locals. Expensive Chinese pumps that farmers cannot afford instead of treadle pumps they can, World Bank tractors that sit rusting for lack of spare parts. Mono-crops devastated by insects. Aceh after the tsunami. Witness JIHPAIGO helping to set birth policy in Indonesia, focussing on Cesareans and medical intervention, in a country with a user-pays health system and high corruption. The result? A lot of unnecessary Cesars, rising medical expenses, families cast into debt, further impoverishing them, and a high maternal mortality rate. The answer? A midwifery, by donation, model of care, set up by an American midwife, living here for 15 years. Her model is starting to spread across the archipelago. Why did she set it up? Because locals requested it as midwives were disappearing or becoming affiliated with hospitals. And she, living among them, listened.

Last week, Nick Kristoff rambed on about this topic in his regular op-ed column. His shining example with Greg Mortenson who's Central Asia Institute is building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The idea is that if we only dumped money into programs like this, we would win the war against the Taliban and the hearts and minds of the locals.
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Of course in Mortenson's own book "Three Cups of Tea", he highlights the key idea that it was not his own initial efforts that got the school built, but the village and its own people, who at one point were forced to sit him down and let them actually build the school.

The tone of this article turned my stomach, especially having grown up in West Africa where the air cooled trucks bearing brands and sun glassed "experts" would come and go, speaking of Michelangelo. The pumps would whither, crops fail. Every four or five years the team was replaced, vehicles and all.

There's a gap in the "profession" of development, and it has to do with fate. My experience is that if people's fates are not bound up, their joint enterprises have little reason to succeed.

Development workers who have bound their fates together with the people with whom they work are too few and far between. Rather, there's an addiction to the adventure of development.

At the end of the day, I don't care much about the distinction between an "expert" or an "amateur." What I do care about is finding ways to ensure the economic fortunes and future prospects of aid workers is as bound up in their success as the fortunes and prospects of those they work with on the ground. It is this connection between fate and enterprise that has fueled the growth of nations.

There's no argument to the fact that well established aid agencies of any variety, either governmental or NGO, have the capabilities that amateurs just can't match. I don't know of any individual who can put in a major dam project just by himself. And I have a great deal of respect for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which does things because Bill just happens to be the richest person in the world.

However, having said those obligatory nice things about traditional aid outlets, I strongly believe that individuals who have been living on the ground in an overseas location for many years can be very effective in dealing with the problems of a village. I know that for a fact, because in my blog (old new lefty) one of the listings on my resume is "one man foreign aid project."

I live in the Ejido San Lucas in Baja California. One of the ways I get my exercise down there is by collecting garbage. The village has a truck that breaks down, and the public employees are often overwhelmed. I have the wherewithal to step in and assist with truck repairs, gasoline, and sweat. And by the way, I also do road repairs. This is not the only stuff I've done. I've taught English in the middle school. I've supplied a year's worth of syringes for diabetics along with diabetes test equipment. My wife has assisted with high blood pressure monitors, and now we're working with other gringos to upgrade the local hospital bit by bit.

Yes, we've seen the effects of foolish foreign aid from amateurs. Christians established an orphanage here when there was no demand for it in our village, but they managed to fund a church, thus possibly strengthening the social network a bit. But as the author of this article notes, this amateur foreign aid's ineffectiveness came from the fact that the missionaries might as well have landed from a flying saucer rather than being a long time established part of the community.

And as to the destructiveness of government aid programs, don't get me started. One of my friends was a UN agricultural specialist who lived down there part time, and he'd regale me with countless stories of $150,000 a year AID workers from the US flying into villages, videotaping their ceremonies, and then presenting them with a CD of the ceremony. The only problem was that no one in the village had a machine to play it. And let's not forget the massive corruption and waste from IMF projects for decades.

Ultimately, anything that can be done to help the world's poor should be done. And as usual, we can expect a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly aid projects. And sometimes, foreign aid really is just like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

At one time, the British Parliament had tabled a proposal to do away with the International Development assistance it pumps through DFID. Of course this did not happen; instead, DFID hired a bunch of economists and metrically minded people to re-assess and re-direct DFID's aid programs in a more effective fashion....now, who has not seen this scenario before? Who is DFID, USAID and all the various contractors and recipients ultimately accountable to and for which indicators? I will tell you; ultimately the indicators, accounts, etc are audited and than briefed to the members of Congress or Parliament and the bottom line is a simple metric of direct or indirect beneficiaries and that the money was spent accordingly without corrupt practices. So, literally, every year, USAID DFID and others officially positively affect with a mass of money, 100's of thousands of poor people, without question or direct verification. Has a poor person in the developing world ever been asked to address the UN or US congress and give a heart warming story with a happily-ever after ending?

A perfect example of this over-all hypocrisy and belligerence of 'professional aid' , is the current Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) in Lesotho. When looking carefully at the M&E indicators for a massive, mostly urban (more or less 90% of Basotho live in rural areas), water project attached to a large dam project (without electricity generation component), the most glaring indicator is the percent increase investment in the country during the life of the project. Now i am now M&E expert, but most people could figure out that such an indicator is simply a pat on the back and 'taking one for the team' as older records show in Lesotho for past large infrastructure projects that investment always rises and than falls at completion....need I say more?

Please, I implore vote to stop aid, yes, the suffering might appear to increase in the short term, but in the long term negligent and grotesque governments of the developing world could no longer hide behind it and use it as a proxy for their great works while they continue to take every western development strategy and pervert them to their own needs and uses, with 'the best and the brightest, who want to save the world' either none the wiser or horribly negligent thinking about their next posting and all the expat parties they will have....Nature will take its course and people will stand up and demand better but not if a small plaster is constantly put on the symptom.

I understand where the argument in this article is coming from. I'm sure Mr. Algoso, like many other development experts or experts in the making, cares deeply about his work and the people he wants to he help, and wants to make sure he has absolutely the most information and experience possible before he does something to screw other people's lives up.

The thing is...I really don't buy that the approach he's talking about and the one advocated by Mr. Kristoff are mutually exclusive. I don't think the point of the Kristoff article was to say that every single American and their mom should move to Botswana and immediately open an orphanage. I think the point was to paint a picture of the anti-ugly American. The American who wants to go and do something about the world rather than sit on their couch and watch it on their TV. There are a million and a half roads to helping people, and if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that development is complicated. However, I for one believe that someone who decides to move to another country as a DIY-er and spends a considerable amount of time in a country learning language and local customs has just as equal an opportunity to exceed...or fail...as someone who's spent a lot of time in a classroom becoming an "expert."

The fact that USAID has become much more of a contracting agency instead of an implementer, that we have MCC, that large foundations like the Gates Foundation are assuming the stage, and that there are DIYers out there speaks to a larger picture: the model for US foreign aid is changing, which is a good thing. I think as many people as possible should be included in the discussion of how to make that happen. If we want better answers, we should be asking how, instead of saying "no".

Just wait until our author grows up, hits the field, and if he dares to leave the secure confines of his development org to which he will be a devotee and self-proclaimed master; sees the misappropriation of American tax dollars on massive scales, the inefficiencies of the huge development firms (shhhh even govt. ones!) applying their cookie cutter methodologies without any concern for local contexts and demand, and how those huge firms or govt development orgs use local agencies on the ground, in whatever country, and do not check their backgrounds, where corruption runs rampant, gender equality is a joke, and the cuban cigars and imported threads are worn by the CEOs. Sustainable solutions are always going to come from within (indigenous design), but the development field can do much to inspire the revolution of ideas to spark the confidence needed... except in situations where governance prevents populations from development in order to hold onto power... then I guess the author will have to consult his books as to what to do next. Development isn't simple but the big ones still don't have it right and when you have a complex bureaucracy that fails to address chronic needs with sustainable solutions then yes, people in all their ingenuity should offer their ideas, time, money, hard work, and give. ; )

I'm amazed at how naive the author is. Most of the sort of "professional" development workers which he aspires to become aren't truly in the business of 'helping communities' . They become beholding to political, commercial and foreign policy objectives which effectively prevent them from facilitating local solutions. Like the missionaries years ago who went to Hawaii to do good and ended up doing really well. Development workers often go out with great hearts but soon discover that large budgets and new Land Cruisers don't come from listening to the people.

Thankfully there are religious groups, NGOs and trained development people who actually get close enough to communities to be useful. This takes the right heart and more time than generally available to "professionals".

Algoso's article is wrong on so many fronts that it would take hours to compile a list. To list just one, he claims: "Such implicit arrogance aside, a more fundamental problem is that Kristof's narratives make development seem simple. In his stories, the hero sees a problem and fixes it. ... Lack of affordable sanitary pads keeps women from work and girls out of school? Develop a cheaper pad."

But if we look at Kristof's actual article, does it seem simple? Here is what Kristof says:

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Will banana-fiber sanitary pads succeed? No one knows. It is entirely possible that Scharpf will find that even if manufacturing goes smoothly — a huge “if” — there is simply not much of a market for sanitary pads in poor countries. Families may consider a 60- or 70-cent pack just as unaffordable as a $1.10 pack. Or suppose for a moment that everything goes perfectly, and pad franchises spread and families buy packets of pads for girls who are now missing school because of difficulties managing menstruation. Will those girls now stay in school? We can’t be sure of that either.

One study in Nepal found that while girls appreciated help with hygiene, they weren’t significantly more likely to attend school as a result. Menstrual cramps were more of an impediment than a lack of pads. And so aspirinlike medicines may need to be part of the solution as well. Research in Malawi by the Population Council suggests that bicycles would keep more kids in school than sanitary pads would. On the other hand, a study in Ghana suggests that supplying pads to rural girls there might reduce girls’ absenteeism significantly.

In short, it’s complicated. Scharpf is engaged in a noble experiment — but entrepreneurs fail sometimes. And anybody wrestling with poverty at home or abroad learns that good intentions and hard work aren’t enough. Helping people is hard.
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This is a helpful caveat to the bottomless liberal addiction to "help others," though I'm not sure its author would admit that as his goal. Or put differently, this is nothing more than an update on the old saw about "upholding the white man's burden" but undertaken, of course, under any other label than that.

Kristoff has written some important pieces, however gooey some of them may be, as this author correctly points out. His NYT piece on Cambodian women being forced to go into prostitution after thoughtless reactionary leftists in Seattle and elsewhere harassed Nike to dump it's Cambodian sweatshop, was one.

Another column pointed out how during geographically predictable Ethiopian starvation epidemics, large families feed their adults first, then march on down the birth order from oldest to youngest in a Darwinian fashion that makes the blood run cold. That one especially took guts and had a conservative written it, would have been castigated to all eternity by the ever- vigiant servants of the MSM.

Conversely, Kristoff's hateful rant on the exceptional Hirsi Ali and her recent book, combined with his pandering to Islam that was his main message in response to her criticism of it. As if he knew more about Islam's downside than a woman who'd been forced to undergo genital mutilation, and was sent packing into an undesired marriage with a much older man who was not of a good disposition--that piece was ill-conceived and disturbing in extremis. On those rare occasions when heroes, such as Ali, wander into our midst, demonizing them is not the appropriate reaction. This too is a liberal problem; i.e., only a liberal can solve something like radical Islam, and then by blissfully ignoring it and chanting some obscure Buddhist incantation until the negative thoughts depart. Ali, as Kristoff surely knows, and was the reason for his scorn towards her, resides under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute.

Bottom line, though, is that nowhere is the law of unintended consequences more telling than when we wilfully violate what Star Trek called "the prime directive..." that persistent Euro-American habit of meddling in other cultures, despite their being in very different stages of evolution, a process we don't understand when it comes to our wanton interventions in their affairs. Not doing so, admittedly, has become much more difficult in this rapidly globalizing world, and the practice of liberal interventionism, most recently attempted in Iraq, while tempting, still doesn't appear to work any better than our adventure in Vietnam did.

And yet, we are doomed to forever watch the seemingly unnecessary sufferings of others, mostly within the third world, and our instinct to do something as if a scratch we can't itch, will always be with us.

But realistically what can we do? Perhaps little or nothing, but we refuse to admit it. If we must act, the only approach I could support would be to compile the best researched science we can, about proven ways we can help without engendering blowback. But how do we anticipate the inevitiable feedback loop of consequences that always crushes our efforts? As this article notes, there are an almost infinite number of ramifications that can spring from any one act of mercy. And compiling a new science also takes time.

If we continue to refuse to back off, and allow the natural consequences that we feel obliged to respond to, occur--such as bailing out starving nations where populations then continue to procreate unabated, as a form of default social security--we only serve to prolong the suffering and misery and worse, project. it into the next generation.

We have to first ask ourselves in all honesty, how much damage have we already done by our persistent pursuit of these so-called good intentions?

You raise some really excellent points and I agree with one of your main arguments, that context is crucial. No one is going to be able to successfully implement a development program—expert or amateur—if they are not intimately connected with the community in which the project is being implemented. But, I wouldn’t assume that: 1) “outsiders” cannot gain an intimate understanding of a community and 2) that Kristof, who is reputably an advocate for community-based organizations internationally, does not appreciate the value and prevalence of creative and intelligent leaders at the local-level.

In his recent article, Kristof does not advocate for us, eager and passionate young Americans, imposing our ideas on small, unsuspecting communities. Alternatively, he is suggesting that we do something to support communities in the throngs of development--by donating our babysitting money towards scholarships for children, mobilizing our own communities to raise funds to support persevering women in Congo (or elsewhere), or even holding our own cell phone companies accountable for purchasing illegally mined minerals. The D.I.Y. Foreign-Aid Revolution is a call to capable individuals to stop complaining about the problems facing our world and to get out there and do something about it!

If we want improve the quality of life of billions of individuals currently living without access to clean water, proper nutrition, or basic health care, what we really need is an influx of new ideas and innovative and energetic individuals to lead the charge in implementing them. This is the premise on which GlobalGiving, the organization for which I work, is based.

In fact, the stories that Kristof shared are some of the leading examples of this. Organizations such as Women for Women International and Run for Congo Women have become some of the leading voices in the discussion on how to secure Eastern DRC's future, and have been included in interviews, panels, and conversations with more traditional "experts" such as Amnesty International, Global Witness, and the UN. And yet, at the same time, Women for Women International, relies almost exclusively on a Congolese staff in the DRC. It would be a shame to unilaterally dismiss these phenomenal organizations.

And they're not alone. Despite what you might think, these stories do "reflect reality." Every day at GlobalGiving, I hear about new initiatives begun by so-called amateurs, who identify a need in a community and respond. I have spent the past two summers in the field, visiting our partners in Africa, where I have seen first-hand the impact of successful collaboration between local groups and outside supporters. In Eastern Uganda, a community-based organization, RARUDO, has developed an income generation project in a village that has no electricity, running water, or economic center. And yet, RARUDO would not have achieved such success if it were not for the financial and logistical support of the River Fund, a U.S.-based partner organization that has assisted in overseas fundraising.

While in Rwanda, I was fortunate to spend a day with Global Grassroots, a U.S.-based organization that provides logistical and financial assistance to local groups responding to community needs. Like you, the founder, Gretchen Wallace, does not assume that she can identify, or even relate to the problems facing communities in Rwanda. So, instead, Wallace has created the Conscious Change Academy where she offers a unique problem solving curriculum that helps groups of women identify needs in their communities and ways to respond. She has also dedicated much of her time to raising funds to support these groups overseas, knowing that it is up to her to finance these programs.

Stateside, I've been fortunate to see the genuine effort that Girls for Change, a middle school group from Illinois, has put into fundraising over $1,000 for girls education projects on GlobalGiving’s site. These are practical ways that people are already contributing to the D.I.Y revolution, taking matters into their own hands and making a real difference.

Will you reconsider joining the D.I.Y revolution?

Developing countries don't need more DIYers -- and they don't need more development workers. Instead of encouraging more Westerners to get international development degrees, wouldn't it be better to simply support the efforts of intelligent, skilled local residents to solve local problems in whatever ways communities deem best? Throwing even more Westerners at the problems isn't the answer.

Debbie, I agree.

Algoso makes two important points here: 1) to achieve sustainable results, transformative social change must come from within the local community, on their terms, and 2) that in any community across the globe there are people and groups doing just this. In all fairness, Kristof nods at this point in his follow-up blog post How to Change the World, but then fails to include any such group in his list of ways Americans can get involved.

But their needs to be a middle ground here- aid organizations don’t have it right yet either. While the rhetoric floating around the professional development community acknowledges that supporting local civil society is the way forward, more often than not, the action on the ground does not match this dialogue. And most people in the community will readily admit that. Local organizations are involved but often forced to play a subsidiary role to larger organizations implementing projects designed elsewhere or so greatly modify their projects to meet the requirements made by donors tht the project evolves into something other than what was actually needed.

What we need is reform- as Algoso notes, the knowledge gained from decades of overseas assistance is important and should be put into action. My organization, Bridging the Divide is trying to do that now in regards to the Middle East, though with the system of foreign assistance so deeply engrained, it has been and will continue to be a challenge. But with the White House calling for foreign assistance reform and a “bottom billion” that isn’t getting any smaller, now is the time for change.

I agree with Dave. The lessons are often ignored by newcomers, and the same mistakes are made over and over again. But the lessons are also ignored by those who should know better. Dave mentioned the PlayPumps example. If USAID had paid attention to its own lessons learned they wouldn’t have invested $10 million in this system in 2006. (There are numerous USAID references I could point to, and just one is their 1993 “Lessons learned in water, sanitation and health: thirteen years of experience in developing countries.”)

In my opinion, the biggest flaw in the PlayPump system was the operation and maintenance scheme. It relied not on users, but on revenue from ads placed on the water storage tank, to pay for operation and maintenance of the system. Turns out the advertising revenue was not so good. During the three decades preceding the PlayPump, there were a lot of lessons learned about rural water supply in poor countries, and one of the most significant ones was that users themselves needed to be responsible for maintenance.

I happen to work in water and sanitation, but I imagine the same is true across all fields - regardless of how much people like talk about sustainability, the lack of actual, rigorous monitoring remains one of the main reasons so many water projects fail just a few short years after implementation. And interestingly, water project failures always seem to be the fault of someone else.

All the well-meaning people in the world need to match their good intentions with results. The only way they can do that is if they invest in learning from others first, and then identify and monitor the critical outcomes of their own projects.

Your proof of Kristof's shortcomings consist of a summer abroad in Uganda and one example of a failed initiative? You should seriously do a little research, and Foreign Policy should do a little fact checking. Examples of positive outcomes far outweigh negatives. The facts are clear.
I'm not sure why a student with limited world experience would even be published in this magazine. He's obviously naive.

Perhaps little or nothing, but we erken rezervasyon refuse to admit it. If we must act, the only approach I could support would be to compile the best tutune son researched science we can, about proven ways we can help without engendering blowback. But how do we sinema anticipate the inevitiable feedback loop of consequences that always gastromid crushes our efforts?