beforehand. So much aid is well meant but completely wasted or actually counterproductive, sometimes tragically. Like this one.

On the plus side, international aid has become professionalized and organized, for better and worse, and they have been studying these problems for some years now and working to avoid these mistakes.

As this coalition of 60 aid groups is doing now.

And it's stuff like this.

international aid has become professionalized and organized, for better and worse, and they have been studying these problems for some years now and working to avoid these mistakes

Yeah... it's been a mixed bag, in my opinion (at least in South Asia, where I've worked with and in it), but it's probably for the best. Still, there's a troubling tendency among NGOs to put the stability of their contracts and grants first...

I'd like to know more about it, it's been an area of interest for me for a long time and something I've thought about getting into professionally.

A background in NPOs (primarily development/outreach/communications work...I've been in leadership as a Comm. Dir. and Exec. Dir. and hated it. Not so much the Comm. Dir...being the ED stinks; everything is your fault and you're powerless to actually change much.) and several bad work experiences burnt me out and sent me back to restaurant management...but I've been feeling lately that I need more challenge and to find more purpose in my work.

Recursion, as these subjects come up. I'm strictly a reader about this stuff. Don't have to be there to predict that tending the organization will become the first priority, though. That's apparently some basic law of nature at work.

So many pitfalls and whirlpools that the best-intended efforts can get sucked into. I was reading about the often warping and damaging effects of celebrities on aid efforts. Emergency relief milk powder that can actually cause starvation by leading to breast milk drying up.

As for the container-loads of goods gathered and shipped off to distant lands by the well-meaning church efforts so prevalent here in the South, mercy! Wonder if word got around and there are fewer of those these days. I'll have to ask around a bit.

We seem to just keep punching Haiti. How much of the money donated for Haiti actually reached Haiti, or did any good?
Yeah, they have that luxury hotel.

the non-profits that is making Plumpy'nut -- that way, it is certain that malnourished children will truly benefit.

MSF criticizes them because the fabrication techniques are patented and they enforce those patents.

At any rate, dumping 500 tons of peanuts, anywhere on the world market, is going to have a detrimental effect on Haitian peanut farmers. The USDA could conceivably make more people happy by buying the Haitian farmers' harvest, throwing it into the ocean, and sending the US peanuts to Haiti (crazily, it would be more expensive to get the peanuts from one part of Haiti to another than to get peanuts from the US to Haiti...)

manufactured by small operations in affected countries as well as by the big French company. Maybe they enforce the patent by overseeing the manufacture, but I didn't think it was made all in one place. The idea was to distribute the manufacturing too, in order to provide some employment and encourage some buy-in mentality.

don't have to use the 'packaged' plumpie nut. It can be made in any kitchen with a blender.

Professional aid groups sometimes lose focus.

Grown in Haiti.

The name of the grassroots organization, food sovereignty, suggests they might still have problem.

There's a balancing act. If they hurt the peanut farmers, that could create more problems in the future.

But is there somewhere else they can send the peanuts?

It is fascinating that something that sounds like a great idea on the surface could have such negative consequences.

However, with the existing food only, kids are malnourished. Wouldn't a solution here be for the US to also buy all the peanuts that they could produce at the current price and add that to the amount donated. This would keep them going with no negative impact and immediately get more food where it is needed.

"We recently donated the 500 metric tons of peanuts to Haiti in partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and in coordination with the Haitian government. The donated peanuts will be used as morning snacks in USDA/WFP school feeding programs in vulnerable areas of Haiti where malnutrition is high. Before donating the peanuts, USDA worked with WFP to develop a distribution program to ensure that the donation would not negatively affect Haiti's domestic peanut market."
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/05/476876371/u-s-to-ship-peanuts-to-feed-haitian-kids-aid-groups-say-this-is-wrong