This show highlights the importance of building states based on indigenous capacities, institutions, and social structures. Foreign aid will only prove effective when it complements a locally-driven process — and stops trying to impose a Western, top-down model of development on fragile states in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. I hope your message receives a wide audience.

It seems to me that the key to Mr. Wainaina's criticisms of Western aid is having a relationship with the people you're trying to aid. Most of us, even those driven by a sincere spirit of charity, want to do our good works at arms' length. We don't don't want to engage the recipient in conversation, ask their names, get involved in their lives, let alone touch them and get "dirty" with the difficulties of their situations. No, it's so much simpler to just breeze in, solve a problem, and move on. That approach may take some giving from our pocketbooks, but takes very little giving from the heart, or from the soul.

How much different — and more effective — when your giving takes the form of moving in and joining the community. Permanently. Buying land. Starting a business. Employing people. Becoming active in the local government somehow. Making friends. Talking to your neighbors. Taking part in cultural and social rituals. Sharing your own art, music, and cuisine. Listening. Encouraging. Building. Investing.

Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your neighbor."

It's very disappointing to me that Mr. Wainaina chose not to attend the World Economic Forum's Young Leaders Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January of 2007. My friend and colleague Brian Belendorf received a similar invitation, and though he had some of the same reservations as Mr. Wainaina, he chose to attend. When he returned he told stories of new directions in global aid: micro-loans, sustainable industries, cultures empowered so the Western groups could exit quickly and well, leaving a healthier, self-actuated society. Stories he first heard from the other invitees, people he would never have met in any other way, in forums and conversations that were made possible by this summit.

Brian told these stories to us within the company. He told these stories to thousands of open source software developers, who respect him for the work he's done in creating the Apache Free Software Foundation. He told these stories to Silicon Valley venture capitalists, who listen to him because of that same history. He was instrumental in helping people in all these groups to rethink their participation in these programs.

But Brian did not tell us anything of Mr. Wainaina's particular insights, because he did not meet with Mr. Wainaina in Davos. Now, almost two years later, I can see that Mr. Wainaina has important and unique insights for this conversation. What a shame that he chose "being mischievous" over being hopeful, that his clear eye on the failures of the past should obscure his vision for the future.

I was thrilled with your show on the ethics of aid. We act like it is easy to bring someone out of poverty, but the reality is that it is incredibly complex and difficult and often our good intentions have disastrous results. What is our just relationship with an impoverished person from Africa? My three cousins and I traveled overland from Cairo to Cape Town, trying to find out what Africans thought about humanitarian aid and why after hundreds of billions of dollars in aid things have gotten worse.

The purpose of the six-month trip was to learn and to make a film, which is currently completed and will be coming out in spring of 2009. The film, titled What Are We Doing Here?, looks at the humanitarian aid industry and their failed attempts to reduce poverty in Africa. It is currently showing at select film festivals. Thank you for your meaningful work and for raising such an important topic.

Thanks for this great program. I just moved to Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, and have been excited to find out about a great international development program here called the Coady International Institute. They operate on the principle that it's local programs and leaders that need support. By the way, I'm not associated with them in any way, just very impressed by what I have seen from living in town here.

I, like some other listeners, was waiting for Mr. Wainaina to present us with some alternatives to some of the current practices that he so vehemently criticizes, but was sadly disappointed. I also wonder, since he is now based in the USA, whether he is participating in any of the work currently being done on the reform of foreign assistance, in which many of the major international humanitarian and development agencies are engaged. Listeners (and Mr. Wainaina) might be interested to review some of the papers on the web site of InterAction on this subject, including recently posted recommendations for the presidential transition team and incoming Congress.

As someone who works for one of the largest international NGOs, I am very aware of the continual efforts of organizations like my own to ensure the long-term sustainable effectiveness of our partnership with communities across the developing world.

I listened to your broadcast yesterday evening with Binyavanga Wainaina with special interest. I recently traveled to Kenya to participate in sustainability (as in environmental) training with a village in Kenya. This was at the invitation of a Kenyan whom I met at an international eco-municipality conference in Helsingborg, Sweden. I spent an additional week with him including living with his family for four days.

While there I tried to meet with Wangari Maathai (having heard her on your program), but she was out of the country. I did meet with the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi and also with the director for US Aid. I would love to meet with you to discuss further. If there is anyway I can support your ongoing research of this topic, please let me know.

I am always so deeply touched by your program, but none more so than your new project of discussing the ethics of aid. Twenty years ago I began my own exploration of giving aid on personal, community, state, and national levels. I studied our national history of helping the poor and minority communities, worked on shaping several state's future policies on helping those with disabilities, people living with HIV/Aids, and welfare reform; and participated on both a personal and community level with issues related to low income housing and battered women. Despite many outcomes that were touted as "successes" (including leveraging a 30 percent increase in funding for AIDS service organizations for my state and creating a landlord/tenant bureau to address low-income tenant issues that was used as a prototype by a number of community action agencies), my experience of those so-called successes was that more harm was done than good. I could not evade a persistent, deep-seated feeling that the results of the work I was doing were successful more in terms of self-aggrandizement, pomp and circumstance, than any actual good to the people I was meant to be serving.

Hearing Mr. Wainaina speak on your program last night was the very first time in 20 years that I ever heard anyone other than myself express that kind of feeling, or even think in that direction. I have felt myself simply drifting, lost from the work I am meant to do, for the last 20 years, struggling, but unable to find another way to help others. I have come to question everything that we believe about giving aid — even the very notion that people who are poor or struggling with other obstacles are necessarily less fortunate. Your program last night has given me the courage to drag myself out of the apathetic cynicism I have been lost in for so long, to once again begin the search for a new way of giving myself to the cause of making our world a better place. I look forward passionately to hearing more of this project. Thank you so much for all of your work. Yours is a voice that I have found nowhere else, a true light for many of us I would guess in a world that feels very lost ethically and morally.

You might want to contact Jerry Farrell as a possible subject for this series. He used to live in the Twin Cities; I believe now he is in Darfur working for Save the Children. He was the "aid worker" interviewed last week about Darfur on Morning Edition. I worked with him many years ago and found him to be very thoughtful and energetic and optimistic and I think he might make an interesting guest.

Understanding the long-term needs of the recipients of foreign aid and the effects of our our aid on those recipients is crucial to people hoping to make a difference. Relatedly, a topic that is virtually never discussed is population growth and sustainability, and how and whether aid organizations should be dealing with this issue.

Related questions that could provide material for your program are: Should foreign aid organizations, (and in particular, religious foreign aid organizations) promote population stabilizing programs? If so, how? What if any is the consensus among faith based aid organizations about the relationship of population growth to the sustainability and well-being of the people they're trying to help? What is the morality of outsider "interference?" [Garrett Hardin, a renowned biologist believed foreign aid led to more population growth in some circumstances, and therefore more suffering in the long term.] Should we continue to "be fruitful, and multiply" boundlessly, or will this lead to boundless suffering? What are the positions of the leaders of the major religions?

Is there any more contentious issue that will have a greater impact on the long term well being spiritually and physically, on the well being of the planet? Again, I hope this might provide some inspiration for your future programs.

A good book is A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis by David Rieff. The positive and negative reviews on Amazon's site have other good reading suggestions. I am one of 200,000 former Peace Corps volunteers who have thought about and debated the "what are we doing here anyway?" question relentlessly. The Peace Corps will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2011, and the direction of the agency is being considered from many perspectives. The "Republicanization" of the Peace Corps has been a source of concern to many of us. Yet the government initiative to double the agency's size, see morepeacecorps.org, is also questionable. I have trained about 400 volunteers and hold mixed feelings about the good we do overseas. Perhaps the best long-term effect of our sojourns is what we bring home in our own values, which we put into practice with our families, communities, and governments. Thank you for your thoughtfulness and openness.

Tonight's speaker's message came through loud and clear. I have been online terminating my contributions to third world projects. I meant well but was misguided.

The interview this morning was extremely interesting to me, and I will try to pick up the details when it is posted next week. Meanwhile it continues to fire my imagination with possibilities. I believe that long suffering Africa could become again the cradle of civilization. This time as survivors of the cultural and economic Armageddon that is beginning to unfold. The election of Obama is a shout in face of the dark continent "Yes you can."

I have spent years working with the poor in Haiti and the best the well-intentioned North American donors can claim is that they have helped Haiti move from a nation of five million starving people to a nation of ten million starving people. I, like many others, want to be part of a solution to help out these long-suffering peoples, but I have always known that my trips to Haiti were to assuage my own guilt in the face of runaway American consumerism. I have avoided the hard work of finding a worthwhile sustainable goal and do what most charities do there: feed the next hungry kid. It is very satisfying short-term fix, but doesn't help the Haitians stand up and do for themselves.

Billions of dollars have been spent by the "Charity Industrial Complex" supporting myriads of peoples and organizations outside of Haiti. Most of these are in competition with each other and they champion many different religions, languages and cultures at the cost of effective help for Haiti. One example is language. In order for a Haitian to become educated and bring the benefits of professionalism to the country they must know two very different and difficult languages, French and English. Only recently has Creole been recognized as the language of the land and codified into something that could be written and learned.

The interview was stunning and the ideas, to me, refreshingly revolutionary. I would like to buy a hard copy of the entire program.

Dear Safari Traveler,

In the next year, you'll be visiting Kenya. There is probably no better country example of the dilemmas, accomplishments, miseries, and joys of black Africa than Kenya. You'll be sitting next to my drivers and friends of 35 years. We'll visit projects and see an array of black African society that will affect your own daily lives when you return. It would be helpful to prepare for this, and our information manual and my somewhat dated reading list will help.

And so will the link below. I encourage you to download the free podcast. This is the first in a series of radio programs dedicated to aid to the Third World. The Kenyan interviewed is an articulate man who expresses many of my own beliefs.

(A couple additional notes: I believe that Paul Theroux has created one of the most despicable books in the library of Africa with his Dark Star Safari, so I obviously disagree vehemently with the commentator's implications of his significance to this discussion. While I agree with Wainaina on a number of things, I also feel his "self-reliance" theories — which are very widely popular today among Kenya's youth — are composed with as much pride as intelligence and in many respects reflect the same ignorance of a connected world that he so perfectly details in the aid-givers. Finally, I'm not religious, and this radio program is, but don't be turned off by the religious connection. I've been avidly listening to this program for years, and it is very easy to parse religious dogma from these very secular issues.)

Regards,
Jim

I so enjoyed Rachel Naomi Remen but felt "itchy" while listening to Mr. Wainaina. If he tells us to "leave us alone," then how come he isn't at home doing something about what is going on instead of working here and writing books, which sell and put him in a much better spot than those folks who are escaping whatever is going on in the afflicted lands? Granted, we have many bogus "charities" that people give to, instead of studying up and supporting the agencies who really can help.

But what gets me is that maybe "leave us alone" should have been practiced beginning a century or more ago when Western civilization enriched itself by stripping Africa of wealth and subjugating its people as essentially slave workers. Then, over here, did our plantation owners practice the same philosophy — "leave us alone?" Meaning that the anti-slavery folks should leave them alone? Sometimes it seems that humans cannot leave each other alone if conditions are to improve.

If we had left Africa alone, granted, they would have developed their own systems, their own borders, and it would not have been that pretty as it developed, people being what they are. Our Christian missionaries muddled about there while those with economic axes to grind muddled still more. I can perhaps see why Wainaina says leave us alone, but having been a poverty-stricken mother myself, while we got my husband through the University of Michigan for a Ph.D. in Chemistry, I am somehow glad that some of us who have a few shekels in our pockets can in some way make it bearable for a poor mother, lugging her kids to what she thinks may be safety, somewhere in a hot, buggy, disease infested land, where maybe before they arrive some other peril devours them.

I am listening to "Ethics of Aid" as I compose this. I compare the debilitating effects of multiaxial aid to the debilitating effects of genocide, starvation, disease, a succession of petty tyrants and murderous generals. Of course many NGOs and governments have made mistakes, but at least they are doing something to address these issues. As I write, the prime minister of Kenya is reported to be calling for international intervention in Zimbabwe. While Mr. Wainaina is comfortable in the United States, he suggests the rest of the world do nothing in Africa rather than make mistakes in its efforts in aid.

In the 1960's there were serious discussions in and out of government that Africa must be triaged or kicked off the lifeboat. We are seeing the result of that thinking today. Yes, many are trying to save or fix the individual horrors in Africa. Most of Africa's leaders have demonstrated either an unwillingness or inability to save or fix their own countries and peoples. Mr. Wainaina strikes me as rather over-privileged and effete. What a silly man. I am surprised you provided him a forum in the face of the overwhelming need in Africa.

Heard you on Chicago Public Radio for the first time, wonderful show with the Kenyan author. Had an idea. I used to work in a student-effort organization. EWB Engineers without Borders. Is there some way you could include them in your program series, which you talked about today? Please do let me know if yes; it would be great exposure to all our efforts too.

A major reason for why donor organizations smear those they try to help may effectively indict the larger societies in which they raise their funds. Assuming all intentions are good, fundraising skews perceptions and demands for supporting material by seeking and producing what will induce people who have the means to pay to send the wherewithal. That requires supporting material — stories, photos, endorsements, statistics, anything — that will tug at people's emotions and generate sympathy and funds, even if recipients don't want any sympathy. Numbers are not popular, because even among the highly educated, statistics tend to be mind-numbing, and few gifts come from the numb.

Happy people, almost by definition, don't need help. Donors want to know where their money will go. Therefore, donors need pictures of recipients who are sad. A sad face is even more credible when it comes with torn clothes and an empty bowl with a background of desert or rocks.

To protect privacy, laudably legitimate, identities are typically concealed. But that allows exaggeration of a person's facts, since their anonymity denies fact-checking. Exaggeration, if well-tuned, increases fundraising, so it's well-rewarded, again and again. To increase funding, more sources are sought. When few sources are relied upon, attention goes to donors who must give, usually those with a pragmatic exchange at stake. Those who don't have to give but might want to have to be approached differently, since pragmatics don't apply. One way is to connect with people's values. That's possible with donors who are individually known, mainly those who've given long enough and large enough to have been met and listened to. That's unlikely with cold-list prospects and persistent small-gift donors, about whom what we know are some of their behaviors, like where else they gave, the behaviors best understood in the aggregate. Thus, the best approach as to values is to assume the values generally applicable across a larger society's strata that are more likely to give at all.

But all that and more merely describe development managers' actions. Why they do it is that donors give in response to those actions. In wealthier societies, at least in the U.S., people with the most means for giving tend to be either wealthier or dedicated, often both, and how the wealthier get wealthier is sometimes through accident (such as inheritance) but often through they or their families earning it, which hints at an undercurrent of belief that people who don't earn nearly as much are not working hard enough, which contributes a strain of ambivalence to their thinking about those whom they're seeking to help, and therefore on how donor organizations report on their work. That ambivalence can only be overcome with extremism or persistence, and there usually isn't enough time for persistence.

Under Mao, China's Red Guards conducted a clothing drive for poor Americans. I have no idea if anything arrived, but Americans I've mentioned this to indicated offense. The U.S. declined foreign aid offered by another nation or two in response to Katrina's damage. Yet donors, instead of reciprocating attitudinally, don't understand why anyone in evident need would refuse a hand. That leads donor organizations to present cases of people who, in donors' eyes, shouldn't say no.

And that leads organizations' PR officers to seek to aid the press in covering stories that'll sell media and will also provide highly credible stories the donor organizations can quote, reprint, or cite. Few non-scholars ever read scholarly journals. They follow mass media. Mass media editors know what kind of pictures and headlines sell copies and broadcast exposures. Donor organizations are glad to help. If the help isn't wanted, the solution is obvious. But if it's wanted, that's the cost until a better way of supporting it is found. Even government funding is influenced by the same general factor, since someone has to agree to provide state resources, a someone who has to be sold on the concept somehow.

I hope someone finds a solution.

My husband (Derick Brinkerhoff) and I listened to your episode this morning on the ethics of aid with great attention. We are both educators and my husband is also a practitioner. In recent years, young people have flocked to study international development with a view to "save the world." This prompted us to write a book called, Working for Change: Making a Career in International Public Service. We intentionally set out to write some guidance to prepare people to serve ethically and consciously. We develop a framework for thinking about service careers; we call the service choice spiral, that explicitly emphasizes self-awareness, working in community, skills and knowledge, and making choices about where to work/serve.

Much as the speaker emphasized, we are distressed by the number of young people who come to this work wanting to "save the world" and as lone rangers. We emphasize the importance of humbly working in and with community, preparing for not knowing if you will ever have successes and for not receiving kudos for ones work, and using ones values and faith to stay inspired and committed. I have had the privilege of talking with many young people at colleges and universities, as well as young professional associations. When I teach international development management and processes I often refer students to your show as I seek to encourage them to explore their own faith, values, and vision. So I was particularly enthused this morning to hear your show and know that you will be addressing these issues.

Thank you for your important work. Your series will provide an additional resource for our teaching and shared aim of promoting conscious ethical service.

Krista Tippet: Whether intended or not, your tone of voice — inflections, etc. — and your little giggles, etc. come across as exceedingly obsequious. This was particularly noticeable with the Kenya interview. It is not at the level of Larry King, but if you do not intend it, it would indeed pay to try to change. Thanks.

I listened carefully to this morning's broadcast waiting for Wainaina to offer an alternate to the prevailing programs on providing aid to Africa. He offered none. He is teaching at a college here in the U.S. I can understand the value of grassroots projects, but, in their absence, is the rest of the world to just stand by and do nothing?

This is not primarily a "report" from me as to how highly I value your programs. I rarely get to hear them, but read the transcripts on the Internet. I was particularly fascinated by the recent program. He made a lot of sense to me, and caused me think about the work we support. I am a member of an Episcopal church here where a Dr. Chrisopher McConnachie and his family were, and indirectly still are, members. In 1984 they felt a call to go to Africa to offer their services. Dr. McConnachie is an orthopedic surgeon and his wife Jennie is a nurse. Until that time Dr. McConnachie practised here for some years.

The impressive thing about the McConnachies (including the two children, now grown) is that they went, established a clinic, and stayed. They made their home in Mthatha,in the Traskie region of South Africa. They have provided medical service to thousands over the years, supported primarily by contributions. Dr. McConnachie died last year, but his wife keeps up the annual visits here to bring everyone up to date on the current situation. Keep up the great work. Blessings and peace.

I greatly appreciated your offering this important perspective on aid to Africa. This program reminded me of the old adage, "You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day or teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime." I have a very tender heart for Africa and great compassion for the African people. It seems to me that the emotion-driven responses of liberals or compassionate liberals in the religious world often fail because they do not really help people become more personally responsible and independent — which, ultimately, is a central issue to long term solutions.

This is where many compassionate liberals, especially in the religious world, would be served well by learning some economics (I am not an economist but do have an M. A. in Economics, but I am presently an evangelist). Unfortunately, their failure to do so leads to demonizing and polarizing positions against those who may have a more nuanced or different perspective on how to help African nations over time.

When evaluating aid, I agree with your guest that much of the aid is indeed not wanted and in fact wasted. But also consider the aid under the Farmer to Farmer program and our involvement with the Kyabirkuwa convent/farm/schools/health care facility and what the Sisters are trying to do there. This is an example of Africans working with us to identify needs, and then providing the assistance that we can and soliciting others to assist in this effort. Please click on My Story. We set up this Web site specifically for the Uganda Project and are actively soliciting donations on their behalf. This is an example of natives identifying requirements and together we are moving forward to solve the problems. Thanks.

Thanks for the story series on the ethics of aid. Having served for six years on a denominational mission board, this topic is of particular interest to me. One of the reasons I have been proud to be associated with the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society is because of their missiology, which is committed to humility, servanthood, and cooperative mission endeavors that rely heavily on the national leaders and partners in the countries where we work for direction and guidance. Of course, we make our share of mistakes, which goes with the territory when you pursue any cross-cultural communication or project. But I'm sure we have steered clear of many hazards by the strategy we implement. We are committed to building mission on relationships with our international partners.