Still, even after White had led dozens of projects, he remained frustrated. “Projects — everyone’s projects — were failing at a really high rate.” Communities had broken wells or faucets that villagers were unable to repair, or the wells produced water more dangerous than that of the filthy rivers that flowed nearby. There were also few, if any, sanitation projects. “In the ’80s and ’90s, the approach was really supply-driven — ‘We are here to give you your water project,’ ” he says. Dig a well, put up a plaque, take a picture, and scram. “People were designing projects for people, not with them.” White came to understand that community engagement (a term rendered almost meaningless by politicians, major brands, and social-networking companies) is a life-or-death strategy in the developing world. “There needs to be a water committee. At least 80% of the community needs to sign up and raise money for the project, participate in its construction and up-keep,” he says. That’s how a project turns from top-down charity to bottom-up sustainability.

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If you think that they really need the money, and that you’re not just helping someone dig themselves even deeper into financial irresponsibility, then my advice is to just give them the money.

Give them the money?  I can’t possibly afford to do that!

Well, my friend, given the default rates of primary borrowers, that is what you’re doing when you cosign–with the additional cost of origination fees, interest payments, late fees, collection fees, a black mark on your credit report, and probably, a destroyed relationship.

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Increasingly, the Christian left is also fond of promoting Democrat candidates and talking about how Republican candidates only look out for the rich and powerful. The exact people that the Old Testament prophets inveighed against. Ergo, the Old Testament prophets hated Republican ideals and all good Christians will vote against Republican ideals.

If that’s true, what should we make of the Democrats record on free trade? After all, the poor in America are far richer than the poor in the third world. By any just standard, the America’s poor are rich. They’re poor only if they’re exclusively compared to other Americans. Free trade is the biggest and best “social justice” platform in existence. Free trade spreads the wealth around the entire world and gives opportunities to billions of people in the third world.

If we do as the Democrats demand — if we restrict free trade — we remove opportunities from billions of impoverished people. “Fair trade” would take jobs away from those that need them the most. “Fair trade” would raise prices for those that can least afford to pay them. “Fair trade” would benefit rich Americans (that is, all Americans) at the expense of the global poor.

Is that Christian? I don’t think so. But don’t take my word for it. India has good reason to fear a Democrat government.

So, pressures will mount for protectionist measures and beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the US, hurting countries like India. Apart from erecting import barriers and subsidising dumped exports, US politicians will seek to curb the outsourcing of services to India. Visa curbs will slow the movement of skilled workers and their dollar remittances back to India.

[Obama] has voted against trade barriers only 36% of the time. He supported export subsidies on the two occasions on which he voted, a 100% protectionist record in this regard.

In 2007, he voted to reduce visas issued to foreign workers (such as Indian software engineers), and to ban Mexican trucks on US roads. He sometimes voted for free trade – he supported the Oman Free Trade Act and a bill on miscellaneous tariff reductions and trade preference extensions. More often he voted for protectionist measures including 100% scanning of imported containers (which would make imports slower and costlier), and emergency farm spending.

In 2005 he voted to impose sanctions on China for currency manipulation, and against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). He voted for the Byrd amendment, a disgraceful bill (later struck down by the WTO) that gifted anti-dumping duties to US producers who complained, thus making complaining more profitable than competitive production.

Obama says the North American Free Trade agreement is a bad one, and must be renegotiated. He has opposed the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement on the bogus ground that Colombia is not protecting its trade union leaders from the drug mafia. In fact, such assassinations have fallen steadily from 205 in 2001 to just 25 last year. Obama is cynically twisting facts to woo the most protectionist US trade unions. This cannot but worry India, which may also be subjected to bogus slander and trade disadvantages.

Unlike Obama, McCain voted against imposing trade sanctions on China for supposedly undervaluing its currency to keep exports booming and accumulate large forex reserves. India has followed a similar policy, though with less export success than China. But if indeed India achieves big success in the future, it could be similarly targeted by US legislators and, will need people like McCain to resist.

Obama favours extensive subsidies for US farmers, hitting Third World exporters like India. This has been one of the issues on which the Doha Round of WTO is gridlocked. McCain could open the gridlock, Obama will strengthen it.

Obama also favours subsidies for converting maize to ethanol. The massive diversion of maize from food to ethanol has sent global food and fertiliser prices skyrocketing, hitting countries like India. But McCain has always opposed subsidies for both US agriculture and ethanol. While campaigning, he had the courage to oppose such subsidies even in Iowa, an agricultural state he badly needs to win if he is to become president.

I want to help the poor. I want the poor to succeed and become rich. I don’t want to protect the rich at the expense of the poor. That’s why I support open borders, free trade, and no import / export tariffs. That’s why I’m surprised that so many people who talk so much about helping the poor consistently support policies that will make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

I’m certainly not opposed to helping my poor neighbors. In fact, I don’t really think I have much of a choice in the matter.

[esvbible reference="Matthew 25:34-40" header="on" format="block"]Matthew 25:34-40[/esvbible]

But I want my assistance to be precisely targeted, I want it to help those who need the most help, and I want to give it myself — not have it taken from me by an overbearing government. That’s why I was glad to find Alliant Energy’s Hometown Care Energy Fund.

Through the Hometown Care Energy Fund, Alliant Energy offers free, confidential financial help for the elderly, disabled and families trying to make ends meet.

Hometown Care Energy Fund is supported by Alliant Energy and its many caring customers, employees and shareowners.

When you give to Hometown Care, your donation goes directly to neighbors in need in your area, with funds administered by local community action programs.

In 2006, more than 1,699 families received an average grant of nearly $248. Your generous contributions of $244,000 helped share the warmth with those who needed it the most.

Their description of the program didn’t offer the kind of information I was really interested in, so I asked some questions.

1. How much of the funds collected funds are paid to community groups? 100%? Or does Alliant Energy keep some of the funds as administrative fees? Alliant Energy distributes 100% of the donations to agencies, but allows the agencies in WI to use up to 6% of the funds for administrative purposes.

2. Does Alliant keep track on exactly how the community groups use the money? Do they use 100% of the money for heating aid or do they keep some of it as administrative fees? Besides the up to 6% used for administrative purposes, the rest is distributed as agencies see fit for heating aid.

3. The website says “your donation goes directly to neighbors in need in your area”. How big is the local “area”? I live in the Village of Oregon, in Dane County, Wisconsin. Is the money I donate disbursed to community groups in Oregon, in Dane County, in Southern Wisconsin, or in the entire state of Wisconsin? The area is by county. A donation from Oregon would go to Energy Services Inc of Dane County.

4. The site says that “A customer’s payment history may also play an important part in selection for a Hometown Care Energy Fund grant.” Does this mean that customers with a solid record of payment — who suddenly fall behind — are preferred over customers who habitually don’t pay their bills. Yes, agencies take this into account in awarding their grants.

5. Finally, does the program encourage customers to economize on other areas of finance before receiving grants? For instance, if a customer was paying for cable television but unable to pay their energy bill, would they first be encouraged to cancel cable before receiving grants? Yes, the reason we use the agencies we do to distribute the funds is the often first take an Energy Assistance application from the customer which may provide them some state aid. Second they may discuss with them their income and expenses. Last these funds are there to help them if needed.

I hate cold weather with a passion and am very grateful for on-demand heat. I can’t stand the thought that some of my neighbors might be cold because I was too stingy to help them out. Now that weather is getting frigid, we’re donating money to the Fund each month.

As we approach Thanksgiving and you think about your blessings, this is a great way to share your wealth with those less fortunate.

Soldiers and relief workers raced Monday to get aid to millions left homeless by the cyclone, as officials said the death toll had topped 3,100 and was certain to keep rising.

According to the Red Cross, the final toll could be anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000.

“The immediate and critical needs are for food, clean drinking water, shelter materials, clothes, blankets and cooking utensils,” said EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel.

“The enormous damage to infrastructure, coupled with losses of both crops and livestock, mean that urgent action is also needed on basic rehabilitation. Otherwise, disease and malnutrition could claim many more victims.”

Most of the deaths following Thursday’s cyclone were caused by a six-metre (20-foot) high tidal wave which engulfed coastal villages, or by flying debris and falling trees that crushed flimsy bamboo and tin homes.

Food stocks, crops, livestock and drinking water sources — as well as entire stretches of road — were washed away by the wave that smashed into the coast along with Cyclone Sidr, and in many places the situation was desperate.

Red Cross and Red Crescent workers said they were using their network of volunteers to distribute dried food and plastic sheeting for temporary shelters, but that many helpers were themselves victims.

“Our estimate is that 900,000 families are affected,” said Red Cross official Shafiquzzaman Rabbani — a figure that accounts for around seven million people.

My wife and I have “adopted” a child through World Vision’s Sponsorship program. As a result, we’re on the regular mailing list. Today, we received a message about their efforts in Bangladesh.

Dear Sponsor,

Last week, we alerted you to the devastating category 4 Cyclone Sidr that struck Bangladesh. We want to update you on World Vision’s relief response to the survivors and to ask you to continue to pray for cyclone and flooding survivors and relief workers providing urgent assistance.

World Vision continues to rush emergency aid into Bangladesh following one of the worst cyclones in a decade, which left over 3,000 dead and millions in desperate need of food, water, and shelter.

Seven of World Vision’s projects were hit, three of them severely, and we are now sheltering over 20,000 people who lost their homes. Please know if a sponsored child is directly affected by a disaster, that it is our policy to notify sponsors as soon as possible.

Supporting 20,000 people isn’t cheap, even in a third-world nation. We donated money tonight and we’ll probably send more next month. Have you donated? Even $10 or $20 will go a long way towards helping those devastated by the cyclone. It will take you less than 5 minutes to donate.

As a Christian, what better way is there to reflect the love of God? You could fly over there and share the Gospel directly. But Gospel presentations without material help are worse than useless. Saudi Arabia is donating more than $100 million. Does the world’s largest “Christian” nation want to be missing in action? When Bangladesh’s Muslims remember who helped them after a disaster, what will they remember about the world’s Christians?

Frugal Christian is a term that should never apply to charity. It’s not up to our government and it’s not up our church boards. Joyful loving giving is up to us.

In a reflective mood as he looks toward his final year in office, President Bush delivered his first official Thanksgiving speech Monday, urging Americans to “show their thanks by giving back” and to remember that “our nation’s greatest strength is the decency and compassion of our people.”

It was a call to action, in a sense, from a president whose first instinct after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was to ask the public for “continued participation and confidence in the American economy,” a request that has been widely interpreted as advice to go shopping.

By contrast, Mr. Bush on Monday asked Americans to consider the “many ways to spread hope this holiday: volunteer in a shelter, mentor a child, help an elderly neighbor, say thanks to one who wears the nation’s uniform.”

Now, I’m certainly no opponent to charity. I love giving and sharing my resources. But I agree with Thomas Sowell. All of this talk about giving back “irritate[s] me like chalk screeching across a blackboard”.

I have donated money, books, and blood for people I have never seen and to whom I owe nothing. Nor is that unusual among Americans, who do more of this than anyone else.

But we are not “giving back” anything to those people because we never took anything from them in the first place.

This Thanksgiving, my family and I will be thankful for all of the ways God has blessed us. We’ll be most thankful for the gift of forgiven sins and the gift of becoming children of God. We’ll also be thankful for the gifts of family, friends, strong jobs, material prosperity, and much more.

In response to our thanksgiving, we will give to others freely and generously as a reflection of the free and generous gifts we receive from God. But we will not be giving back. Not to Madison’s poor, because they’ve never given us anything. And certainly not to God — nothing we do for Him could ever begin to approach even a partial repayment for what He’s given us.

Armed with a Georgetown University diploma, Beth Hanley embarked in her 20s on a path hoping to become a professional world-saver. First she worked at nonprofit Bread for the World. Then she taught middle school English in central Africa with the Peace Corps. Finally, to certify her idealism, she graduated last spring with a master’s degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University.

… Hanley, a think tank temp who dreams of aiding the impoverished and reducing gender discrimination in developing countries, is stuck. … Numerous young Washingtonians bemoan the improvisational and protracted career track of the area’s public interest profession. They say the high competition for comparatively low-paying jobs saps their sense of adulthood, forcing them to spend their 20s or early 30s moving from college to work to graduate school and back to work that might or might not be temporary.

No, wait. I don’t weep for you.

dispatches from TJICistan: Little Miss Perky Nose and Silk Blouse is not making mad benjamins

You know, somewhere there’s a guy, toiling in a cube, who just spent six weeks working out a way to make toilet paper with 1% less energy input, thus cutting the cost of goods sold by 0.25%, while keeping the TP just as soft and smooth as it was before.

…and that man has added more to the sum total of human happiness and productivity over those six weeks than little-Miss-altruist Beth Hanley has in her decade of getting elite degrees, wasting time in the Peace Corps, and getting her masters degree in international relations.

I’m not saying that Mr-TP-improvement is a hero (“because what’s a hero?”).

And I’m not saying that little-miss-perky-nose-and-silk-blouse is a bad person.

But, aside from her own sense of self worth, what has she accomplished in the last decade?

Pretty much zero.

Transterrestrial Musing: Get Out the Hankies

Who is more of a humanitarian, a Norman Borlaug, who through his technological efforts saved untold millions from hunger, and even starvation, and was reasonably compensated for it, or an Albert Schweitzer or Mother Theresa, who labored to help a relatively few poor and ill, while living in relative poverty? Obviously the latter derived personal satisfaction from their hands-on retail efforts, but I don’t think that they ever whined about their lifestyle.

These people do in fact need to grow up, and understand that there are other ways to help people than forming non-profits and NGOs, or working for a government bureaucracy. People are helped most by technological advances that make essential items–food, transportation, communication, shelter–more affordable and accessible to them, not by those who provide them with handouts and sympathy, and keep them in a state of perpetual dependency.

Exactly.

Many people donate hair to make wigs for children with cancer. It turns out that donating money would be better.

Perhaps they would be less adamant if they could visit Ms. Coffman in the Locks of Love office in Florida. Every day the hanks of hair arrive, filling some 10 postal bins, representing the best intentions of donors, but so much of it destined for the trash.

“A check would be easier for me,” Ms. Coffman said. “But would the donors get out of it what they do? No.”

I think people going on missions trips to build houses in third world countries suffer from the same problem. Ideally, they’d donate a week’s worth of pay rather than a week’s worth of time. That money would then be used to hire local workers. The money would stretch further, help more homes to be built, and boost the local economy.

It would be a far more generous and effective way to donate. But people wouldn’t feel nearly as good about themselves. And, often, that’s what really matters.

“In the past 25 years, the cases of avoidable blindness have doubled to 35 million presently. At this rate, by 2020 the number will double again to 70 million,” he explains. But in the face of those statistics, he finds great hope: Aided by recent improvements in lens manufacturing and surgical techniques, 90 percent are curable with simple cataract surgery that costs $20 and takes 20 minutes of surgery.

There have been roadblocks along the way, however. Cataract surgery removes the clouded eye lens and replaces it with a synthetic intraocular lens. When CBF started the eye camps, these lenses cost about $300, making them “unaffordable” for the program.

…

In 1992, CBF and its partners helped create Aurolab, an intraocluar lens and suture factory in Madurai, India. The factory produces high quality lenses and sutures at a low cost, making the surgery available to poor people throughout the world. At $2.50 per lens and $1.00 per suture, Aurolab distributes the supplies to not-for-profit organizations in 120 countries.

Now that’s the kind of charity — and innovation — I can get behind. Way to go Dr. Suresh Chandra!

I was thinking about American Christians, our wealth, and whether or not we share our money as God commanded. I looked up the U.S. population. According to the CIA World Factbook, the U.S. population is around 296 million people. Of those 296 million, a little over ¾ claim to be Christians. The median income in the U.S. is $44,473 dollars a year. That would mean the median tithe in the U.S. should be $4,473 a year.

Let’s assume that half of the people that claim to be Christian are lying. Let’s assume that the other half of the people that claim to be Christian actually are dedicated church-goers. That would mean we should see 114,596,977 people tithing an average of $4,473 a year. Total tithe in the U.S. would then be somewhere above $500 billion a year. Unfortunately, total 2004 charitable giving in the U.S. only amounted to $250 billion.

Why do I bring that up? Yesterday, I read an article about Joan McCarville, a woman that had had one transplant too many. She needed a lung transplant, but couldn’t get one unless she and her husband ponied up over $330,000. That sounds like a lot of money. Until you consider the fact that either a lot of people are lying about being Christians or else the church is being woefully underfunded. Just imagine what the church could do with an extra $250 billion a year! Area churches would certainly be able to help out a lot more people like this unfortunate woman.

As I say, that’s what I originally planned to post. Then I went searching for information on tithing. I found an interesting dialog from Dean VanDruff about tithing. It is entitled “The Tithe, A Biblical Perspective”. It really gave me a lot to think about. You really, really, really should go read the entire thing, but I’ll excerpt some of it to give you a taste:

“The tithe” as part of the Law is no more applicable to us than making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year is. It is mentioned in the New Testament only a couple of times, generally in the context of rebuke to the Pharisees concerning fastidious observance of the ceremonial Law.

Christians in general reject the idea that we are “under the law”, yet tithing somehow gets exempted. But it is all or nothing, when it comes to the law, is it not?

For the Jews the tithe was a “party” (or feast, if you like) and was to be “consumed in the sight of the Lord”. God’s command to tithe includes consuming “whatever your heart desires”, including “strong drink”! Imagine using up a tenth of your agricultural increase every year in a single party! Wasteful, extravagant, and flesh mortifying; yet God’s clear command. With this Jewish (and historic) perspective, no wonder the prophet Malachi (3:8-11) asks: “How have we robbed from You, Lord, by not tithing?” If you understand the Jewish idea of party-tithing, you will appreciate his question. God commands His people to enjoy themselves by bringing the bounty together so that “There may be food in my house” and then feasting and enjoying themselves in His sight.

A different perspective, no? It certainly gave me something to think about. So I’ll refrain my haranguing the church about there being a clear need to tithe more. On the other hand, there’s certainly nothing wrong with giving more of your income to the local body of believers. After all, there are a lot of big, legitimate needs all around us. Our individual contributions might be small, but together they could accomplish quite a lot. I’d rather give my share of the $500 billion to the church than to the government.

And Joan McCarville? Well, it turns out she’ll have most of the cost of her transplant covered. There is a medical relief fund setup, if you would like to help out with the rest of the cost. Contributions can be sent to the Joan McCarville Lung Transplant Fund, Farmers State Bank, P.O. Box 145, Hollandale, WI 53544.

UPDATE: The VanDruff’s have something else up that I found interesting: Bible Study: Money in Scripture. I only skimmed it earlier, but I think it’s worth reading through more carefully later.