Jesus Creed

Jesus Creed

How to Help Haiti 1: David Brooks

posted by Scot McKnight | 2:35pm Monday January 18, 2010

We are reposting for discussion here bits of David Brooks’ essay in the NYTimes.  First point he makes:

This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.

A brief comment. Perhaps one of the best books ever written on aid in impoverished countries is the story of Paul Farmer, told by Tracy Ritter in Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Random House Reader’s Circle)
. Farmer has raised from nothing a wonderful clinic and community because he saw to the heart of the problems in Haiti — and he’s at the opposite end of the spectrum politically than Brooks. But here’s some telling information about Farmer: he frequently refers to is aid work in Haiti as the “long defeat” because it’s not about winning. Recently he’s stated that NGOs can’t get the job done completely; government is necessary.



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Brandon Smith

posted January 18, 2010 at 5:42 pm


In this same editorial, Brooks highlights two very effective examples of work in poverty, the Harlem Children’s Project and the No Excuses Schools. He highlights the strength of these projects being the change in culture through hard work and applied accountability. Knowing both of these programs and also using my own experience of teaching in Title One schools, I think that he is right on! However, I also believe that Obama would not disagree with anything that he wrote. Obama has actually cited the Harlem Children’s Project from early on in his campaign as an effective model for working in empoverished areas. Anyone who has worked in these fields for more than a month knows that they are effective because they change a culture of death into a culture of possibility and hope. Dare I say change…
Also, the current stream of U.S. Dollars is going towards not building a sustainable environment of successful culture changing machinery, but it is going toward international aid and relief. Yes, hopefully, any aid toward revitalization will capitalize on turning problems into opportunities to change the negative aspects of the culture. I might add, this horrific tradgedy maybe an impetus for America to rearrange it’s aid to Haiti all together into forms that reflect David Brooke’s sentiments.



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Mich

posted January 19, 2010 at 4:12 pm


I haven’t read his essay, just the fraction you posted here, but if he’s really comparing China to Haiti, this is beyond reductionism.



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