Teach a man to fish...

So I was listening to the radio and heard a young woman talking about eliminating poverty in the Pacific, which included in her mind all the countries that boarded the Pacific. So full marks for ambition as that is quite a bit of territory to cover and I couldn’t help admiring the energy and enthusiasm she was bringing to her project.


At this point I would like to say she is doing a lot more to help in this area than I am ever going to and all efforts to help ones fellow humans should be applauded and encouraged but........ (bet you saw that coming right)

........ she was, in general terms, talking about giving poor people stuff as the solution to the problem, she spoke of hoping she could persuade governments and others to forgive debt so that these poor nations weren’t paying “crippling” interest costs instead of using the money to better themselves. She seemed to be oblivious to the fact that the countries had presumably spent the borrowed money on something which presumably didn’t help much, not sure why giving them more money would change anything.

She talked about an “army” of volunteers giving their time and skill to complete projects within the country like building a pharmacy, or a school or a hospital. Which is a great plan to a point given that presumably there is not pharmacy etc at the location that you choose, however this is just another variation on the give the poor people stuff view of the world, not to mention potentially naive about the cost effectiveness of such an idea.

Is it effective for me to ship myself to Cambodia (for example) for a period of time in order to deliver my skills to the local people. Either I deliver my specialist skills which are likely in low demand in an under developed country (just about no matter what your skills are unless you happen to be a builder or a farmer or a doctor) or for me to be an amateur builder etc where my main claim to usefulness is that I am a willing pair of hands. Frankly if willing to help is in short supply in the group you are trying to help then give up straight away.

So one idea that did resonate was of course the building of a school(s) and presumably the associated staffing and materials that a school needs. We see time and time again that education raises all manner of outcomes and is the foundation for progress. I don’t understand why this idea is so often over looked it is after all the whole basis for the success of the human race, it is because we learned “stuff” that we progressed.

One of the really huge things we learned to do was farm, and most importantly produce enough food in an efficient manner to allow us to turn our attention to other tasks like making better weapons to wipe out the other tribe we didn’t like, but ignoring that for the moment. This is something NZ does really well (farming) so as a focus we should teach the “poor” folk to be better farmers. Now I am aware that not all poor people are rural peasants but there sure are a chunk to be making a start with. We can leave the city folk to others there are enough poor folk for us all to have plenty.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime, not to mention his kids etc. So lets stop giving poor people stuff, lets trying walking beside them to help them out. Having said that the radio guest is still doing a lot more than most of us.