Pardon my opinion

Some ideas are just stupid. So it upsets me when people with stupid ideas are praised.

Cases in point:

1. A project at a certain top-tier school to raise funds for something in Kenya (probably a school or an orphanage, they seem to be the only things college kids care about) (And yes, I am sick and tired of hearing heart warming, touching, oh-so emotionally compelling stories about African orphans so I'm slightly more sensitive to the topic). The project involved sending old newspapers and magazines (in the US, a-hem, Indiana) TO Kenya where they make them into necklaces (if you've been to East Africa, you know what I'm talking about). Then they shipped them BACK to the US, sold them on campus, and donated the funds.

Two trips, across the ocean, just to make a necklace. And why not use local magazines and newspapers (bc there certainly is plenty in trash piles in Uganda, I can only assume the same for Kenya) is absolutely, positively beyond me.

2. Another project at another top-tier school (a-hem public university in, cough cough, North Carolina) that ships defective painted glass beads (from a local craft organization) from Kenya, to the States. Students then make the beads in the jewelry and sell them on campus and send the proceeds to an orphanage that students have built a relationship with by sending numerous interns to volunteer over summers.

Clever, but the project is product of at least two grants and entreprenurial fellowships to stay afloat and I highly highly doubt they are coming out ahead.

Oh, you say, but Cortney, darling, you're missing the point! Its social entreprenurship! The point is to enact social change! Not make a greedy captialistic profit! That's entirely beside the point!

Look. Positive social change, ok, great, love it, whatever, BUT YOU CANNOT IGNORE BASIC ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES BECAUSE DOING SO ONLY GENERATES MORE LONG RUN HARM THAN GOOD.

If you have to survive off of government funds to do you're little feel good (but completely and illogically inefficient) project, lets just think about that for one second. Let's extrapolate a little bit. Someone has to pay to ship the beads and the necklaces and the purses and the aprons from Africa to the US. Even if you're organization doesn't, the government has to foot the bill. Hurray, you've successfully increased national debt, weakened the US's economic position further, and therefore made the country less capable of allocating funds to development related issues.

Is the money lost to the US small in comparison to the gains in Africa? Perhaps. I'll agree a little goes a long way. But it adds up in the US, too. Argues of profit v. nonprofit organizations aside, if everyone takes on ventures that aren't self-sufficient and sustainable, where on earth is the money going to come from to fund them? And no, you can't just print more, bc horray you've just devalued the national currency and further weakened our position globally, horray, we now can do less to help other people with our money that is worth less.

It seems amusingly ironic to me that a lot of "these people" talk on and on and on about social responsibility and taking social issues into account, in fear of the big bad capitalism monster, well guess what folks..........isn't all this just a TAD socially irresponsible? It's inefficient and it comes at exorbitant unnecessary cost. Thanks for keeping OUR nation's ability to provide for OUR citizens in mind. Not.

I could go on longer to make this more air tight but I have studying that needs get done so I wont. But overall, I'm ticked at how idiotic some ideas can be and how much praise they are given and the pedestal we put these people on.

Why not send ONE intern over to TRAIN more personnel at the orphanage so you don't need to spend the money on sending so many interns over, and consequently have more money to donate to the orphanage?

Why not train women to make their own beaded necklaces to sell locally and pump money into the local economy, which lots of research has show has greater net results than merely donating money directly (and trains more women and "empowers" them, which some researchers say has consequent benefits on better family spending decisions such as educating children and saving. I see pros and cons to this argument, however)

Why not get wealthy families in Kenya that can afford newspapers to donate them for jewelry making, instead of shipping US newspapers all the way to Kenya. (and consequently increase rich/poor interaction and increase inequality awareness that could potentially lead to narrowing socialeconomic gaps via cultural attitudes)


Yes this is personal for me because I'm in the same field as these kids and had entertained the exact same ideas, but turned away from them for sake of attempting to avoid doing more harm than good. I will rarely do something unless I see some net benefit to be found in it and I DO NOT believe that "something is better than nothing" which is what motivates a lot of people to rationalize their under-scaled and inefficient efforts.

Yet who wins at the end of the day? Who is getting national attention and praise and a great resume full of lots of fellowships and grants and acceptance in to great grads schools. The idiots. Yes I'm jealous and yes it doesn't seem fair. Call me a brat but I do think I have some validity in my point.