No you didn’t say NGO’s; I kind of went there from previous talks about the links between NGOs and governments. I was, as they say, going off on a tangent. 

“You pretend to kind of get the point of the rest of what I say, yet you attack me.”

I do agree with what some of what you say, but have the right also to disagree with other points.

Christ though Nathan I have better things to do then ‘intentionally’ offend you over using the word ‘hicks’. Really you are making a mountain over a molehill on this one. And your comments about policy are noted.

Sara, yes I think that you are right that educated or not, when people are put in such situations their actions are often deplorable. The reasons why people from specific social backgrounds are sent to do such work is a wider question.

Brian, I have had similar experiences with the UN. On one occasion they chose to continue a project I was involved in – we were subcontracted – despite that fact that we told them it was not even moderately successful. We offered to stop taking payments as we had a decent reputation and it was a little embarrassing, but they said as it had been budgeted in we should just keep taking the payments; essentially for doing nothing. Total waste of money.

I’m joking. Yeah I see your point, I don’t even remember what the topic of this post was. But the comments were getting kinda caustic.

I do agree with Kuda that NGOs aren’t as effective as they could be. I used to think NGOs were “charities”, where all people would work there out of their good will. This may be the case with many people (such as the PC) but for some NGOs it’s just a business. And that means not cooperating or coordinating with other NGOs for fear of losing contracts, it means doing things that help your NGO instead of the people (such as taking on projects you aren’t prepared for), and in the case of UNDP where I worked it means that the top 5 on-site managers earn a combined salary of over $800,000 (tax-free of course), consuming over 1/3rd of the entire budget of the organization.

What makes anyone think that they are any different when put in that situation is beyond me. The reason why it happened is because those at top negligently created the dynamic in the first place.

You pretend to kind of get the point of the rest of what I say, yet you attack me. I could care less that you use the word less than I care about your intent. I especially care about you acting stupid, treating a class of folks like dirt because they’re rural (let me guess, you grew up in an urban area), pretending like you’re sorry for the offense, and then telling me I’m a pissy bleeding heart. I refer you to my past mentions of a comment policy.