ligeia
hates
to sound like a killjoy but wishes people would stop patting themselves on the back for donating a couple of bucks to the relief effort
anyway, I read an interesting take on it from Frank Rich last week in the NYT
whooops that was David Brooks, sorry
kind of lost him towards the end, but he says, micro-aid, while vital and necessary, can only go so far and is ultimately insufficient
because macrodevelopment in Haiti is in such a state of failure that all aid organizations can do are these kinds of microprojects that
do not effect any real change
the other problem is that what happened last week was not a natural disaster story
it is a poverty story, and after all this time no one really knows how to address the problem of poverty
in 1989 a 7.0 earthquake struck the an urban area in Northern CA and a couple of dozen people died
So anyway...........
There's nothing wrong with doing whatever you can, of course, to help but for the love of god stop being PROUD of yourself for doing so
(IMHO, I think, etc)