Can my family simply sponsor a poor family in a poor country?

[Frylock]

Is there a program that lets someone here in the US simply pick a poor family from a poor nation, and simply send that particular family money every year?

$1000 a year, I take it, is large but affordable to me, while it may be world-changing for some families out there (correct?). Can I just pick a family and send those guys $1000 each year?

Or is there no such program?

If not, is this because it's either obviously a bad idea or has proved to be a bad idea?

[Hermitian]

Obviously child sponsorship is quite popular. One of the reasons for this is that an organization can provide guaranteed helpful services to children. This means that the organization can make sure a certain percent of their money goes directly to those who need it the most. Keep in mind, the best future a very poor area has is an educated and non-malnourished generation.

To just give the money to a family is not always a good plan. There are no restrictions on how it is spent. The father of the family (the likely decision maker) may spend it on housing, food, and education or he could spend it on alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes.

[Alley Dweller]

Keep in mind that sending money directly to a family would not be tax-deductible in the United States. Sending it to a charity which then supports poor families is.

Most of the "sponsor a child" type of charities don't actually send the money directly to a specific child. Rather, they sponsor programs that support an entire community. The child you sponsor is only symbolic, although they do arrange for you to get that child's pictures and letters.

Obviously, if you can identify a poor family that needs help, it's your money and you are free to send it to them (unless they are in Cuba, North Korea, or Iran).

[jjimm]

Absolutely world-changing. E.g. here in Indonesia, more than 50% of the country survives on $2 a day or less. So $1,000 a year is a year and a quarter's worth of wages.

If you actually want to do this, rather than contribute symbolically, I recommend you go somewhere like here, meet some people you like who earn your respect, then do it privately - through Western Union or the like. Or if you can't, ask someone you trust to make a recommendation.

[md2000]

Plus, there's the reliability aspect. Just because you can afford it now, does not guarantee it becomes a priority 5 years down the road when your employer folds and you can't afford your own house. If a family comes to depend on the money, what happens when it stops? They pull the kid out of school? The farm fails because they can't afford gas for their new tractor? They electrified their house and now can't afford the power bill?

This is the real advantage of a large organization that colllects from thousands of donors and passes it on to thousands of clients. The loss of one or a few donors will not have as big an impact on any single client.

Plus, how do you know their priorities are yours? Dad may think his scooter is a hgher priority than clothes or education for the kids. (Maybe it is, if he uses it to get to work). Do you become the nanny for the whole family, who should be making their own decisions and don't need someone second-guessing their choices. Better to have a large organization setting broader but more specific goals, like a well and pump in each village and paying for school and school supplies everywhere.

This is the danger - the impulse to be generous is normal and good, but applied in the wrong way might bring resentment and bad blood.

[R. P. McMurphy]

What you are proposing is probably a bad idea. In many poor cultures if one family is the beneficiary of something that is not available to all they will be ostracized. Or, they will have share it with their extended family which can get very extended.

You would be better off sponsoring a project that will benefit an entire village. Build a school. Set up a micro finance system. Help them get clean water. Help send in a medical team. For any of those types of projects you have to make sure that the village is vested in the project. Outright handouts often to more harm than good.

I am not a fan of the sponsor a child programs. Many of them are outright scams. Again, you can't help one child without helping them all. That doesn't work for one kid in a village while the others are starving or in tatters. The money probably isn't being used the way you think it is. Most of those programs should be shut down and the money used for things that would truly be useful.

[Frylock]

I've done some further research. It appears that sending money directly to individuals (rather than to organizations with programs intended to raise living conditions in some less direct way) can definitely work--but what has worked isn't one guy sending another guy money, but rather a collective sending money to all the individuals in a particular village. Just like one poster above said--you're not really helping someone that much if their neighbors are still living under the same conditions as previous. It helps much more when the whole community gets aid.

[md2000]

Yes, try to imagine what could happen if Joe down the street suddenly started getting a million dollars every year. If you can't imagine some really nasty things, you have way to much misplaced faith in human nature.

Joe buys a flashy new car - no wait, a giant Doge RAM Pickup truck. His kids have all the latest video games and start playing favourites with who can come over and play, they get beat up at school because they have lots of lunch money or they become snbby; the local housewives are all two-faced about the rich folk. People come to them with sob stories, their cousins need new bicycles and uncle needs help with his mortgage...

Look how the current trend in right-wing government spending bashing is to say"oh, those teachers and civil servants have it sooo good and have guaranteed jobs living high off the hog while you poor slobs slave paycheque to paycheque and cannot be sure you will be working next year." Envy is a very basic human emotion.

Tossing a serious financial change into the economic system of a small town is disruptive whether it's good or bad.

[robert_columbia]

Obviously child sponsorship is quite popular. One of the reasons for this is that an organization can provide guaranteed helpful services to children. This means that the organization can make sure a certain percent of their money goes directly to those who need it the most. Keep in mind, the best future a very poor area has is an educated and non-malnourished generation.

To just give the money to a family is not always a good plan. There are no restrictions on how it is spent. The father of the family (the likely decision maker) may spend it on housing, food, and education or he could spend it on alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes.

Keep in mind that child sponsorship, traditionally, does not result in your money going directly to your sponsored child. I sponsored a child a while back through my church, and everyone who participated got a name and a biography to feel warm and fuzzy over, but we all knew that the money would all go into a pool that would be used generally to support all of the children at the orphanage.

[Hermitian]

I am not a fan of the sponsor a child programs. Many of them are outright scams. Again, you can't help one child without helping them all. That doesn't work for one kid in a village while the others are starving or in tatters. The money probably isn't being used the way you think it is. Most of those programs should be shut down and the money used for things that would truly be useful.

I am not trying to derail this thread, but since the OP is interested in finding good ways to help out poorer people in other countries, I assume this is a valid discussion.

Do you have some backup for the assertion that "many" are scams and that "most" should be shut down? Who said that they help only certain children in a village?

You mention that "The money probably isn't being used the way you think it is." If you do a Google search for child sponsorship, the top two get four stars from Charity Navigator (which takes into account financial, accountability, and transparency elements).

I have no doubt that some are shady and some could be scams, but you seem to be painting with broad brush.

[drachillix]

Is there a program that lets someone here in the US simply pick a poor family from a poor nation, and simply send that particular family money every year?

$1000 a year, I take it, is large but affordable to me, while it may be world-changing for some families out there (correct?). Can I just pick a family and send those guys $1000 each year?

Or is there no such program?

If not, is this because it's either obviously a bad idea or has proved to be a bad idea?

Just a thought... Maybe open a small investment account and send the proceeds every year.

The family gets help, not huge help, however, it can go on indefinitely. Adding to the account will increase the ongoing assistance, and in case of emergency, you still have the principle available.

[Turble]

I lived in southern Mexico and Guatemala for a couple of years.

In Mexico I had an Indian housekeeper who would spend a few days staying at the house (she slept on a mat in the kitchen with her six year old son – wouldn't use a spare bedroom) and then a day or two in her village off in the mountains. One day I took them out and bought them both a pair of shoes, the first they ever had. They came back from their next trip to the village without the shoes. She was evasive about what had happened to them; I figured she had sold them. Eventually she told me that the people of her village wouldn't speak to her or her son because of the shoes. She nailed the shoes to a tree outside the village and all was well.

In Guatemala I was buying arts and crafts from native village people to import to the US, mostly small purchases of $10 to $20 from each family but there were a couple of families who did exceptional work in larger quantities and they might get $100 to $200 at a time. I kind of expected that they would use the money for things like a sewing machine to make their jobs easier but it turned out that they would basically blow the whole wad on cases of Coca Cola and pastries and the like, throwing a party for friends and neighbors. Turned out once again to be a matter of it not being socially acceptable for one family to have so much more than the others.

I tend toward local charity now.

[hogarth]

My wife has poor relatives in rural China. If you send me money, I'd be glad to forward it along to them.

[Nars Glinley]

The OP might want to check out micro loans through a group like Kiva. (http://www.kiva.org/) It's pretty close to donating directly to an individual or group.

[Animastryfe]

Here (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=573495)is a thread I created a while ago asking about Sponsor A Child charities.

[md2000]

I lived in southern Mexico and Guatemala for a couple of years.

In Mexico I had an Indian housekeeper who would spend a few days staying at the house (she slept on a mat in the kitchen with her six year old son – wouldn't use a spare bedroom) and then a day or two in her village off in the mountains. One day I took them out and bought them both a pair of shoes, the first they ever had. They came back from their next trip to the village without the shoes. She was evasive about what had happened to them; I figured she had sold them. Eventually she told me that the people of her village wouldn't speak to her or her son because of the shoes. She nailed the shoes to a tree outside the village and all was well.

In Guatemala I was buying arts and crafts from native village people to import to the US, mostly small purchases of $10 to $20 from each family but there were a couple of families who did exceptional work in larger quantities and they might get $100 to $200 at a time. I kind of expected that they would use the money for things like a sewing machine to make their jobs easier but it turned out that they would basically blow the whole wad on cases of Coca Cola and pastries and the like, throwing a party for friends and neighbors. Turned out once again to be a matter of it not being socially acceptable for one family to have so much more than the others.

I tend toward local charity now.

The west coast Indian tradition of Potlatch is based on something similar...
In a subsistence economy with no money, or gold bars, or similar medium of wealth - all a rich / powerful / hard-working guy could do is accumulate goods. At a certain point, you have far more than you could possibly use. Nowadays we say "who needs 11 houses or 10 cars?" Back then, who needs 50 blankets or two years' supply of smoked salmon? So the tradition was that an overendowed family would share the wealth, have a big party and give it all away. The logical extension is that what goes around, comes around, so they would eventually be recipients and evryone shares in the largesse, the whole village is rich, and there would be less envy and more gratitude all around; except that part of this was a competition for prestige.

This logic falls down in a society with money, savings accounts, and wealth options so big that only Bill Gates can afford everything. I can build a bigger house and own a more expensive car. In the poltach societies, as the western world's money came along those who managed to earn a decent amount of wealth threw ever more lavish parties instead. It became illegal and the RCMP eventually would swoop in and seize large amounts of goods intended for poltach giveaways - dozens of blankets, Tools, or even a collection of washing machines from Sears, for example. The western work ethic suggested that give-away orgies and a culture that encouraged bigger and more frequent competitions of wealth disposal were not compatible with western ideals of work hard to earn and keep your own possessions.

I saw something similar on a reserve once - the government built quite a few nie new homes. Every one, every window including the large picture windows had a hole in the glass. A friend explained they had the attitude "who do you think you are having an intact window when mine is broken?" If you didn't make giant star of crakhs or a hole in th glass (rag stuffed in hole to block the cold), your neighbours would oblige. The only ones immune form this were the chief and council, who gave themselves much nicer houses on an iolated part of the reserve, and one fellow who had a nice little house, a nice grassed yard with picket fence, and 6 burly sons to ensure it stayed that way.

(There's the joke about this same envious attitude is Russian peasants - the Lord appears to Ivan one day and says to him, "Ivan, you have been such a good servant to Me, that whatever wish you want, I shall grant it..."
"Thank you, Lord," says Ivan.
"BUT!... " says the Lord, "Peter down the road has also been a loyal servant. So whatever you ask me to do, I will do for him twice as much!"
Ivan thinks for a while, then says "Oh Lord, take one of my testicles!")

[Weaver]

I lived in southern Mexico and Guatemala for a couple of years.

In Mexico I had an Indian housekeeper who would spend a few days staying at the house (she slept on a mat in the kitchen with her six year old son – wouldn't use a spare bedroom) and then a day or two in her village off in the mountains. One day I took them out and bought them both a pair of shoes, the first they ever had. They came back from their next trip to the village without the shoes. She was evasive about what had happened to them; I figured she had sold them. Eventually she told me that the people of her village wouldn't speak to her or her son because of the shoes. She nailed the shoes to a tree outside the village and all was well.

In Guatemala I was buying arts and crafts from native village people to import to the US, mostly small purchases of $10 to $20 from each family but there were a couple of families who did exceptional work in larger quantities and they might get $100 to $200 at a time. I kind of expected that they would use the money for things like a sewing machine to make their jobs easier but it turned out that they would basically blow the whole wad on cases of Coca Cola and pastries and the like, throwing a party for friends and neighbors. Turned out once again to be a matter of it not being socially acceptable for one family to have so much more than the others.

The crab bucket effect in action. Alas it's all to common.

[Tom Tildrum]

Heifer International will send livestock to an individual family (or to a community group), but I don't think the donor gets to pick the family.

I think I looked into this once because I wanted to send a friend a flock of geese as a gag.

[R. P. McMurphy]

I am not trying to derail this thread, but since the OP is interested in finding good ways to help out poorer people in other countries, I assume this is a valid discussion.

Do you have some backup for the assertion that "many" are scams and that "most" should be shut down? Who said that they help only certain children in a village?

You mention that "The money probably isn't being used the way you think it is." If you do a Google search for child sponsorship, the top two get four stars from Charity Navigator (which takes into account financial, accountability, and transparency elements).

I have no doubt that some are shady and some could be scams, but you seem to be painting with broad brush.

My point is that the methods they use to raise funds are disingenuous. When you give you are not really sponsoring a child. As others have pointed out, raising up one child or family apart from the community is not a workable solution.

Charity Navigator measures the efficiency of an organization. It doesn't make a determination of the merits of the cause.

I don't like organizations that use fundraising tactics that are not transparent.

[Musicat]

The OP might want to check out micro loans through a group like Kiva. (http://www.kiva.org/) It's pretty close to donating directly to an individual or group.I'd like to second this idea. The Kiva organization does the checking and fieldwork for you; you're less likely to be scammed and you will get periodic updates.You can contact the loan recipient or not, as you wish.

[Jake]

Whatever charity I donate to, I would expect a financial statement from them upon demand. Check to see how much is going into administration and how much is going to the people who need it.
Carefully.

[Frylock]

Having received two PMs now about this thread (with two very different purposes...) I want to here make clear that the OP was not written as part of any current budgeting that I am doing with my family's money right now.

I was idly curious, with a view towards thinking about how my family's money might be spent in the future.

[Notassmartasithought]

If the OP has already gotten PMs about items, I can imagine the demands that might be put upon his benighted family. That's another reason why virtually all the "sponsor a child" philanthropies no longer actually sponsor individual children (can you imagine the difficulty of having one or two sponsored children and one or more unsponsored in the same family?).

[cynyc]

I recently met a guy on a bench. I talk to everybody and get them to talk back too!

Anyway, he worked for some "church" that donated cows to communities way way overseas. I forget where but it was a plane ride that I wouldn't take unless wherever I was headed flying for that many hours I was going to stay for a year as an example of a bad late night sentence.

Fast forward: They have to pay "authorities" that pop out of the wild along the way and then the major corporation (guy in the next town with 4 cows) gets pissed off and steals the cow and on and on.

In theory it was a great idea.

Speaking of cows it reminds me of that tribe in India/Africa? that donated some cows to us in response to hearing about the 9-11 attacks. The cows never made it here. I was angry at that--it was rather rude of us methinks.

Good nite!

P.S. There are hungry working people right here in our great country. Just saying.

[R. P. McMurphy]

Heifer International will send livestock to an individual family (or to a community group), but I don't think the donor gets to pick the family.

I think I looked into this once because I wanted to send a friend a flock of geese as a gag.

I recently met a guy on a bench. I talk to everybody and get them to talk back too!

Anyway, he worked for some "church" that donated cows to communities way way overseas. I forget where but it was a plane ride that I wouldn't take unless wherever I was headed flying for that many hours I was going to stay for a year as an example of a bad late night sentence.

Fast forward: They have to pay "authorities" that pop out of the wild along the way and then the major corporation (guy in the next town with 4 cows) gets pissed off and steals the cow and on and on.

In theory it was a great idea.

Speaking of cows it reminds me of that tribe in India/Africa? that donated some cows to us in response to hearing about the 9-11 attacks. The cows never made it here. I was angry at that--it was rather rude of us methinks.

Good nite!

P.S. There are hungry working people right here in our great country. Just saying.

Just a heads-up. Be very wary of the Heifer Fund. It sounded good on paper but has not worked well in practice.

Just another thought. If you really want to do something effective, donate to an orphanage that cares for abandoned and disabled children. Children that are at the bottom of the social totem pole. Children that otherwise have no hope. Your dollars will give them some time to live a life of dignity and will get them some of the respect they deserve for being born as a human being.

Don't donate to any organization that is doing adoptions of children from third world counties. Almost all of these are corrupt. Don't even get involved with them if you want to adopt a child. Stay away.

If you want a suggestion as to an agency that really takes care of the least of the least then PM me.

[Reply]

Just a heads-up. Be very wary of the Heifer Fund. It sounded good on paper but has not worked well in practice.

[snip]

Don't donate to any organization that is doing adoptions of children from third world counties. Almost all of these are corrupt. Don't even get involved with them if you want to adopt a child. Stay away.


Can you elaborate?

[Woodenspoon]

bad idea, the charity countries, the ngo countries remain mired in poverty, ones like china that took care of business themselves are moving ahead.

there are plenty need causes in your own country i bet anyways.

[R. P. McMurphy]

Can you elaborate?

Heifer Fund is another organization that raises money in a disingenuous way. Also, it's easy to reproduce animals and people have had a lot of time to figure out what amount of animals are sustainable in a given area. Dumping livestock on an area can be a bad thing. Check out these links:

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.comments&orgid=3809

http://www.valuesandcapitalism.com/dialogue/global-affairs/are-you-really-buying-heifer

http://www.earthsave.org/news/gatesfoundationcruel.htm


As for adoption, it can work but it is a business that has a lot of shady operators. Hopeful "parents" will be strung along for years while some glitch pops up in the process time after time. All the while, money is being sucked out of them. They have already invested so they keep chasing. Even if its not the adoption organization it might be the government official that needs a bribe, or two, or three in order to process the paperwork.

[Anne Neville]

Whatever charity I donate to, I would expect a financial statement from them upon demand. Check to see how much is going into administration and how much is going to the people who need it.
Carefully.

If you sponsored a family directly, you wouldn't get this kind of control over their finances. A lot of people who would want to sponsor a family directly would want the right to tell the sponsored family what they can and can't do with the money. I'm not sure a lot of poor families would want to sign up for a deal like that. You probably wouldn't like it if someone gave you money but told you how to run your financial life, why should they?

Sometimes it gets worse than that. My parents' church provided housing for some Katrina refugees. Some of the members of the church were complaining about the refugees doing things like sleeping in on weekends, things that had nothing to do with finances but of which the church members didn't approve. I'd have to be pretty desperate, or getting a shitload of money, to accept someone else wanting that level of control over my life. Even if the things they told me to do were things I would do anyway, I would feel that I was not being treated like an adult by being told to do those things.

[Mangetout]

There are ways to do this that have some hope of being effective, no matter how broken the situation (although I'm not aware of any that involve sponsorship of whole families - probably because those are really quite variable units in comparison to, say, individual orphans.

But sponsoring the education and support of a named child through a reputable, auditable scheme seems like it ought to work - by targeting development, it should be able to contribute positively (however minutely) to the future of the community in which the individual is embedded - educated children are tomorrow's doctors, etc.

[Kimstu]

bad idea, the charity countries, the ngo countries remain mired in poverty, ones like china that took care of business themselves are moving ahead.

This is way too simplistic. For one thing, there are charity organizations working with, e.g., orphanages and rural development in China too. It's not as though Chinese economic policies accomplish all the improvements by themselves.

For another, some other third-world countries such as India are both growing economically overall and getting a lot of NGO input for their many impoverished people.

It's true that some charity programs are inefficient and/or corrupt, and if you want to give money to help people in a third-world country you should scrutinize the recipient organization(s) very carefully. But there are a lot of reasons why many chronically poor countries stay poor. Receiving aid from people in richer countries doesn't guarantee improvement, but it certainly doesn't automatically prevent improvement.

Just saying "oh, don't bother giving at all because it will just keep them dependent" is ignorant and inaccurate (not to mention a cheap excuse for selfishness).

[constanze]

My point is that the methods they use to raise funds are disingenuous. When you give you are not really sponsoring a child. As others have pointed out, raising up one child or family apart from the community is not a workable solution.

Which child sponsorship is disingenuous in their methods? I know of Plan intl. (secular), World Vision (protestant, was under criticsm for too-emotional ads in the past but promised to do better now) and SOS children's village. True, they all have posters and spots with "make a difference in the life of one child" - but once you read the extended brochure, they point out quite clearly that you are not handing money to one child directly, but giving to one community, and that the child is meant as representative of that community (in case of Plan and World Vision) or that you are financing the whole village (in case of SOS).

[Tom Tildrum]

Just a heads-up. Be very wary of the Heifer Fund. It sounded good on paper but has not worked well in practice.

That explains why I got all those geese sent back to me. I'm just glad I didn't order the bees.

[Turble]

That explains why I got all those geese sent back to me. I'm just glad I didn't order the bees.

I haven't had much luck ordering orphans either. They're never as cute as their pictures and most of them seem to be a lot older than they claimed. Too expensive to ship them back, too.

[ioioio]

Getting money to the type of person you want to help can be problematic.

Some years ago, a friend and I were rescued from a difficult situation in a Mexican train station by an amazing Mexican woman, who eked out a living by aiding travelers there. She was very intelligent and spoke numerous languages fluently. She was also homeless and malnourished. Her story was that as a child she’d been plucked from her impoverished family by a university that wanted to study her incredible gift for languages. She got an education, but in the process was put on display, poked, prodded, and made to jump through hoops. Eventually the study ended or funds ran out, and she was sent home. How much of this is true I couldn’t say.

We adored her and were extremely grateful, so made arrangements to send her things like shoes and clothing from the U.S. We sent several packages and also letters with small amounts of money. It didn’t take long for someone in the Mexican delivery system to realize what was going on, and the letters and packages either didn’t arrive at all, or they arrived opened, with anything of value removed.

Impoverished people may not have access to the amenities we take for granted. There may not be a reliable way to gift them. It’s unlikely they have a bank account. They probably lack the sophistication to figure out a safe way through a corrupt system. And it’s unlikely that their windfall will go unnoticed by those around them.

[Fleetwood]

Yes, try to imagine what could happen if Joe down the street suddenly started getting a million dollars every year. If you can't imagine some really nasty things, you have way to much misplaced faith in human nature.

Joe buys a flashy new car - no wait, a giant Doge RAM Pickup truck. His kids have all the latest video games and start playing favourites with who can come over and play, they get beat up at school because they have lots of lunch money or they become snbby; the local housewives are all two-faced about the rich folk. People come to them with sob stories, their cousins need new bicycles and uncle needs help with his mortgage...

Look how the current trend in right-wing government spending bashing is to say"oh, those teachers and civil servants have it sooo good and have guaranteed jobs living high off the hog while you poor slobs slave paycheque to paycheque and cannot be sure you will be working next year." Envy is a very basic human emotion.

Tossing a serious financial change into the economic system of a small town is disruptive whether it's good or bad.

Sheesh. How are things going at Occupy Wall Street?

[Peanuthead]

Another recommendation for Kiva.com here. The money you give is a loan not a charitable donation. The payback rate is close to 100% and you can roll it over into another loan to another entrepeneur when paid in full. Select a particular country or type of business you wish to fund and they will match you with a screened recipient. I made a small ($25) loan to a family in Cambodia wanting to start a small grocery store and recieve an accounting from Kiva each month as to the amount repaid. So far payments each month are on time and $16.00 is available for me. When it's back up to $25 I plan to let it ride. LRR!
The only money you don't get back is a small administrative fee of IIRC $3.

An added benefit is you can tell all your friends you're in the international banking business. :D

www.kiva.com

[even sven]

International development professional here.

Larger (and many smaller) development organizations are relatively skilled at what they do. They have decades of experience, and are increasingly focusing on data-driven interventions that have been proven to be effective. It's been a learning process and it's far from perfect, but aid agencies are pretty darn effective. For example, if you want to run a program say, building wells, you are going to do a survey first to determine incidence of water-borne diseases, and a survey (with a control group- maybe in a village with similar conditions and disease burden) after the wells are used to see if your program is cutting down on disease. In other words, these organizations are not just stabbing in the dark- they are basically run like businesses, and they put out products and services that help their beneficiaries.

I'd make a donation in the name of a trusted organization, and count on them to leverage their experience and expertise.