• Is child sponsorship ethical?
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[URL="http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22472455"]http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22472455[/URL] [QUOTE]More than nine million children around the world are sponsored by Western donors and a major new report on the work of one aid agency has found that sponsorship does improve children's lives. It has reopened a long and fierce debate over whether this hugely popular form of giving to the poor is either ethical or effective[/QUOTE] [IMG]http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/304/media/images/67508000/jpg/_67508569_worldvisionboys.jpg[/IMG] [QUOTE]But critics of this form of child sponsorship argue it is unfair and discriminatory; while one child is helped others in the community are left behind. Most agencies, like World Vision and Plan International, now steer sponsorship money more broadly to development projects like water supply, nutrition or schools. [/QUOTE] [URL="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/jpe.html"]http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/jpe.html[/URL]
"Is it ethical to help the poor?" The only problem I have with sponsorship programs is that they usually work in the form of religious propaganda machines to make the local populations convert.
[QUOTE]Dr Bruce Wydick, professor of Economics, was surprised at the findings (recently published in the US Journal of Political Economy): "As a development economist I am used to seeing very modest outcomes from aid programmes, but we were amazed at the size of impacts on kids." [/QUOTE] [QUOTE]In a follow up study of children currently being sponsored by Compassion, he found they scored better than their peers on happiness and hopefulness. He argues that building children's self-esteem and aspirations could be as important as providing financial help and schooling. He said: "'Bringing hope to children is a trite phrase but it actually may be a profound and little researched aspect of development." [/QUOTE]
Well, from the article, it seems to be "it's immensely beneficial to those who get it, but it's not entirely fair to the ones that don't get the same treatment." While it's going to make me sound a bit like an asshole, some people are going to be left behind in things like this, and that doesn't mean you should stop trying to help as many people as possible.
Is this news? Sounds more like a debate topic
[quote]But critics of this form of child sponsorship argue it is unfair and discriminatory; while one child is helped others in the community are left behind.[/quote] if you can't help them all it's better to not help any :downs:
In terms of being humane, yes it is ethical. In terms of being economically efficient, not so. But so what? Having them all die of starvation won't make their economies better by cutting off the umbilical cord.
-snip & goodbye merge-
[QUOTE=yumyumshisha;40589809]Is this news? Sounds more like a debate topic[/QUOTE] A new study was published about it. The article is about what that study says. People post articles about new studies all the time, so yeah it's news.
[QUOTE]There has been very little previous research into whether the $3bn (£2bn) transferred from the rich world to the poor through sponsoring children actually has a measurable impact.[/QUOTE] [editline]9th May 2013[/editline] The question boils down to: Is it right to sponsor individual children instead of their entire community?
[quote]But critics of this form of child sponsorship argue it is unfair and discriminatory; while one child is helped others in the community are left behind.[/quote] This is super dumb. "If you can't help everyone, you shouldn't help anyone at all!"
[QUOTE=Valdor;40589810]if you can't help them all it's better to not help any :downs:[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;40589863]This is super dumb. "If you can't help everyone, you shouldn't help anyone at all!"[/QUOTE] I can see where they are coming from. Instead of giving a dramatic advantage to a select few, it may be better to invest that money in the welfare of the whole community and increase the general standard of living. Leave no one behind. [quote]Most agencies, like World Vision and Plan International, now steer sponsorship money more broadly to development projects like water supply, nutrition or schools.[/quote] This is what I'm talking about. Do people even read the shortened article in the OP before posting?
Need to be going into communities and fostering change and community growth on a grassroots level, as well as coordinating effectively on a larger level. The thing is that the situation in many of these countries is less than stable, so even if in a single community, we can teach sustainable practices(i.e. teach them to teach themselves) what's to stop a group of bandits from coming in and killing them all for their new prosperity from learning to work together?? For instance, if the aid is going towards delivering a piece of food to one child every day, what happens when that food doesn't come? Will the child be any more prepared to survive? No. But if instead the money is being put into building schools and hiring educators, and bringing in experts on farming to teach better farming practices, or programs that build unity inside a community, the effect will be far more profound on a community level than just helping X of kids get food day to day. Not that food shouldn't be provided but its the classic give a man a fish or teach him to fish.
[QUOTE=Antdawg;40589883]I can see where they are coming from. Instead of giving a dramatic advantage to a select few, it may be better to invest that money in the welfare of the whole community and increase the general standard of living. Leave no one behind. This is what I'm talking about. Do people even read the shortened article in the OP before posting?[/QUOTE] Basically, this man argues in favour of Community Sponsorship over Child Sponsorship. I favour his point of view. The problem lies not with the individuals, but their placement in the terrible communities around them. These disadvantaged individuals are disadvantaged because of the circumstances they exist in. If we change the circumstances, we kill the problem. My pappaw always said, "Cut the head off of the snake and the ass will die." The head of this snake is communities as a whole being in poverty. We can change this from the ground up, as child sponsorship does; we can change this from the top down as well, by sponsoring the community as a whole and allowing the community to empower its people.
Yup, and seeing as how impressive the results turn out to be from individual sponsorship, the question is raised; is it better for the communities to help individuals and let those individuals pull the community up with them?
A major consideration is that the charity resources come in piece by piece. So yeah, building a well so that the whole community gets drinking water is the ideal way to do it. But you need the resources to do that. What happens if the charity only has the resources to provide water for a few families in that community? Why shouldn't they do that instead? It's the difference between having $2,400 to spend on that community right now, vs having $200 a month to spend for the next year. It's the same amount of resources, but vastly different in how you can use them.
[QUOTE=cecilbdemodded;40590252]A major consideration is that the charity resources come in piece by piece. So yeah, building a well so that the whole community gets drinking water is the ideal way to do it. But you need the resources to do that. What happens if the charity only has the resources to provide water for a few families in that community? Why shouldn't they do that instead? It's the difference between having $2,400 to spend on that community right now, vs having $200 a month to spend for the next year. It's the same amount of resources, but vastly different in how you can use them.[/QUOTE] At that point we need to decide a better way to effectively give out resources, to form a more cohesive effort.
[QUOTE=cecilbdemodded;40590252]A major consideration is that the charity resources come in piece by piece. So yeah, building a well so that the whole community gets drinking water is the ideal way to do it. But you need the resources to do that. What happens if the charity only has the resources to provide water for a few families in that community? Why shouldn't they do that instead? It's the difference between having $2,400 to spend on that community right now, vs having $200 a month to spend for the next year. It's the same amount of resources, but vastly different in how you can use them.[/QUOTE] Simply providing the water is only a short term solution. To pull the communities out of poverty there needs to be long term solutions implemented. Giving water, rather than building a well, does not help the people become self-sufficient. We can increase health standards by giving whole communities fresh water, yes, but when we tie up all our money in supplying this water who is going to build the well? The community could become more productive from having better health I won't deny that, but what incentive is there for them to build the well themselves? In some ways this relates to the "trade, not aid" argument.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g[/media] A different perspective on charity.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;40589863]This is super dumb. "If you can't help everyone, you shouldn't help anyone at all!"[/QUOTE] that isn't the point. if it will help more children to allocate resources one way, but you choose to allocate resources in a way that privileges certain children, it is absolutely immoral. to put it to an extreme, it would be like using a $5m grant to make one child a millionaire instead of distributing it in a way that it improves the lives of thousands of children. that would obviously be immoral, right? so maybe instead of these child sponsorship programs we should focus more of our resources on building sustainable communities?
It's ethical to have them Starve? I doubt dependency will develop and food/educations will allow them to improve their countries.
I think that money is far better spent fixing the root problems than shortsightedly helping individual children.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;40589863]This is super dumb. "If you can't help everyone, you shouldn't help anyone at all!"[/QUOTE] I don't have any on hand, but there are instances of people being robbed of the aid they receive from these agencies.
Genius logic "can't help everyone at once so you shouldn't help anyone at all."
A water well will provide clean, fast access to water for an entire village, and a school will help their children advance the village/country's development. It's kind of weird and surreal really, parts of Africa is still just tribes, and stone/bronze age-ish level of technology. It's completely understandable though, considering most of the area is not very suited for human survival, and "westerners" literally plundered the continent, halting their development. Only goes to show how much of an impact the environment has on us Humans.
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