uhuhshesaid

Training.

The worst thing that westerners do is come to Africa and do these jobs. The amount of well meaning people that come and paint churches or build orphanages - they just take jobs away from local painters and builders. Electrification and welding can be done by locals, but perhaps some need training. Provide this at a local or rural college to make a difference, donate supplies or help organize large training workshops in larger towns nearby. A big one would be safety equipment as I've seen electricians here work in ways that make me extremely worried for their safety. But do not do the jobs for them. That's critical. Let them train, do the work, and get paid for it.

Yes! My general advice is 'If you want to save Africa, instead of vacationing in Paris come here, go on safari, and give us all your tourist dollars."

What do you think the military could do at this point to appease the protesters? With elections coming up, are there certain steps you'd like to see them take? Besides, of course, the obvious of the police not attacking those in Tahrir Sq, is there any concrete proclamation or actions you're looking to achieve?

Kinda feel like Mexico is the brother that still has a bad reputation, but is looking better and better every day. Sure he didn't do as well in school at first, and sure he ran with some gangs, but Mexico has been taking night classes and adopting some charitable outreach in recent years. And these days, while the USA is constantly getting drunk at the family bbq and picking fights with Mexico - Mexico is keeping his head down and getting shit done.

Mexico has been offering to get Grandma's drugs on the cheap, offering charity when the USA runs into trouble and helping out the entire family while the USA has been off masturbating furiously into its own flag.

What I'm saying is Mexico partied. Mexico did some shit. But Mexico is writing his dissertation while the USA is eyeing his grandma's cheap Mexican opioids.

I'm a fan of micro-loans but not gifting regular people. It's hard to explain but it has caused a lot of issues that cannot be anticipated without vast knowledge of the culture and state of the region.

For instance, in the Karamoja region (hit hard by the LRA) people gifted women with tons of training and materials to start creating jewelry out of paper. Yay fr women's empowerment and also making money. Except, it really did nothing for the men. Men that had spent years fighting for their homesteads, suffer from immense PTSD and drink at deadly rates because they have no jobs. Nobody gifted them anything.

So you have women who work all day rolling paper, and men who drink. Guess how that plays out? With a lot of battered women, children and a healthcare crisis around drinking.

Another example: people gifted the women in a local prison a hospital so they didn't have to walk 6 kilometers to the other hospital to give birth. Seems like a great idea. But said gifters didn't know that Luzira Prison would be stamped on these children's birth certificates and rather than suffer the shame of their children being born in a prison, these women would still walk the 6 kilometers to give birth elsewhere.

You cannot drop in and do good. People who really, really study this are already here and doing this work. We need to be listening to them.