Gilding the Dandelion: Making the best of bad aid...

[J.]

In the snarkastic, cynical spirit or John Frum's "Haiting Cynicism" (here, and here), let's try finding the silver lining in all of those bad aid ideas. Here are a few to get us started:

"Voluntourism" - hey, even the professionals mess up sometimes, so let's applaud those who are at least pure in motive, even if they don't know what they're doing. They probably accomplish some good... 

"Collecting Shoes for Relief Distribution" - even if they sell them later, it's no problem. Used Shoes: almost as effective as cash transfer; easier to get high school students excited about.

"Fuel Efficient Stoves" - They work beautifully, if the target population is used to cooking over stoves, if there is any fuel at all, if the pots in our NFI kits are the same size as the stoves, if we're not distributing RUTF, if...

"Celebrities moonlighting as aid workers" - Best idea ever: no one gets relief ops like someone who's had their makeup done by professional beauticians...

"New hyper-technical emergency shelter solution" - The perfect solution for today's beneficiary who finds him/herself displaced in a stable environment with good rule-of-law, crystal clear land tenure laws, all of her/his documents intact following the emergency, being served by an NGO with strong local importation agreements and a solid supply chain management department, where local authorities have no incentive to divert external aid, there is a glut of specialized construction materials in the world market, delivery + construction is, like, totally possible before the rainy season which begin 13 days from now...

You get the picture.

Add your thoughts in the thread below..