We all like to think that when we give to a charity, we’re helping people out. At Simply Great Lives, we really encourage people to take a good look at their impact–are their efforts effectively creating the desired change? John and I recently watched a thought-provoking documentary, Poverty Inc. It’s available on Netflix and It’ll definitely get you thinking about whether a charity is necessarily effective.
It was consistent with a book we read a couple years ago called The Soul of Money. But the documentary went further in illuminating how a charity can actually hurt the communities and individuals it is set up to serve. For example, Poverty Inc. described the impact of Tom’s shoes. It sounds great that for every pair of shoes you buy from that company, the company gives a pair of shoes to a needy person in the area where they got the idea for the shoe. An unintended consequence occurred, though. It put the local cobbler out of business. Who’s going to buy from him when they can get shoes for free from Tom’s
Similarly, in another example, a church started sending eggs to an impoverished community. I don’t remember the details. It may have been in Haiti after their big earthquake. A local man had built up a good number of chickens and had been making a living selling the eggs in that community. But when the eggs started arriving for free people stopped buying from him. Ultimately, he sold off the chickens to make ends meet and shut down the business. Then the sponsoring church decided to give the eggs to a different community the next year. Then the community had no eggs coming in and no way to create their own.
There were a lot of other stories of unintended negative consequences. There was even an orphanage where at least 80% of the kids still had parents but these parents gave up the kids so they might have a better life.
The whole documentary got me thinking about the help we give that ends up hurting people in the long run. It also chronicled some help that really does help. One person even referred to the phrase, “teach someone to fish instead of giving them a fish.”
Check out Poverty Inc. for yourself. It is a great opportunity for each one of us to evaluate how effective we are being at bringing about real change in the lives of other people. Let’s not assume that giving money to a charity is making a positive difference.
