Bread For The City

Bread for the City was excellent.

I’ve been keeping tabs on many various sort of non-profit organizations over the years, and most of them provide grand disappointments. Take, for example, that a candidate for Afghanistan’s presidency campaigned on the platform of kicking out several hundred corrupt NGOs, who, along with United Nations, were said to be “even more corrupt than the Afghan government”.

And even when the organizations aren’t corrupt – spending large percentages of their money on “marketing” or “administrative fees” instead of on the issues they claim to care about – they sometimes miss the mark.

Take, for example, the myriad NGOs who free slaves from around the world by buying them from their owners and subsequently letting them go. Think about that for a second. What’s wrong with that picture? That’s right, boys and girls: buying slaves – and therefore increasing demand – will only lead to an increase in supply of slaves! In attempting to do good, these moronic NGOs are only perpetuating the problem.

This is not to mention the NGOs in Cambodia who buy $75,000 luxury SUVs to drive past starving children. These ones are often the same who forget the mantra of “it is better to teach a man how to fish than simply giving him some fish”. Note that this does not apply to Bread for the City; in Cambodia, impoverished individuals could literally benefit from increased agricultural skills, technologies and techniques.

In short: some NGOs miss the point, or are straight-up corrupt. BFC gets the point, and, I hope, is not corrupt.

Conclusion: Yay BFTC!