kim 3

Is all aid good aid?

Going to Consol Homes for the past week has really provided us with first-hand experience as to how aid is treated in NGOs. Donors often times give many things without thinking about the cultural appropriateness of the items they donate and NGOs have problems allocated all they are given. We found Malawian people are very accepting and never want to seem ungrateful for aid, however when organizations from the UK and US give hundreds of English books to a pre-school taught in Chichewa, no one can benefit. We could definitely identify that Consol Homes suffers a lot from aid which they either can’t use or simply just don’t know how to use.

We were not assigned anything official to do so for the last two days we undertook two small tasks of cleaning and clearing which revealed some of the deficiencies within the system of donating in Malawi.

On Wednesday we went to the classrooms at Consol Homes to check the toys and books that were available for the kids. Problem #1, the classroom items were unequally distributed amongst the three classrooms. The youngest classroom was bare while the other two were well equipped with toys and games, the eldest classroom was even painted bright colours. Problem #2, with the abundance of crayons and pencils, there was much potential for art & craft with the children, however none of the classes had paper to draw on. Problem #3, there were lots of wall charts but no tape to hang them by. Apparently the teachers got by gluing things to the wall which led to much difficulty when they want to put up new things. Despite all of this, the worst was probably the gigantic piles of boxes we found taking up ¼ of one of the classrooms. We decided to clear this as our project of the day.

After investigating with the teachers, we found the boxes contained donations of chalk, crayons, scissors, rolls of tape, hair bands, vitamins, and almost expired worm medicine. This was from UNICEF and various other organizations which simply had not been distributed yet. What a mess it was to clean up so the kids could have their classroom back. Aid like this takes so long to distribute because they get so much of one thing and don’t know what to do with all of it and also if they give it all out, they don’t know when next they will be getting more. It’s really difficult deciding how and when to allocate what is donated.

Thursday we were in a similar situation but in a greater capacity. We were taken to the Consol Homes warehouse to help count things for distribution. When we arrived we were appalled to find hundreds of boxes of aid yet to be allocated. There were shoes, clothes, books, maize, plastic containers…you name it and it was there piled high to the ceiling of the warehouse. However, twice this week the children went home without food and everyday many come to school in the same torn clothes. It is very difficult to understand why it takes so long to give out aid when so many people need it. If only they kept an inventory of all the items they receive they wouldn’t have to go through the tedious process of counting, boxing and then recounting the items again. Also maybe if they regulated their distributions they could target the families who need it the most. Sadly, there are many things that need to be done before the system of aid can become an efficient process. Without computer, or even English proficiency it is very difficult to instill and sustain such a system.