“A humanitarian is always a hypocrite,” wrote George Orwell in a 1942 essay on the English reactionary poet Rudyard  Kipling. Our existences all closely depend on the exploitation and robbery of dollar-a-day sweatshop toilers in Asia and elsewhere, so went the gist of his argument. The standard of living of even the most ‘enlightened’ and ‘progressive’ among us requires this daily brigandage to continue, and therefore all ‘humanitarians’ are two-faced. (Orwell had a beautiful knack for telling people exactly what they did not want to hear—those who pretend to be his fans often find themselves quoting him at their own expense.)

I implore you to put aside for a second that this is about as relevant or sensible as saying the fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves dismantles the case against slavery, or that the myriad superstitions of Isaac Newton, who was often found applauding the production of ‘ectoplasm’ at ludicrous ‘séances’, makes the effort to teach classical mechanics a waste of time. Also please place on that backburner, if you can, the other fact – hard on our bereaved Western consciences – that if it were not for his sweatshop, the primary occupation of that oppressed Asiatic labourer would probably be subsistence farming (which garners $0.00 a day instead of $1.00), or perhaps street-begging and less dignified occupations. (The only thing worse than being ‘exploited’, notes journalist Robert Guess in his excellent book on Africa ‘The Shackled Continent’, is not being exploited, and the only means available to lift entire populations out of poverty is rapid, export-based industrial revolution.) Forget all that for now – there is a valid thread of a point here that ought to be followed.

This author believes it undeniable that there is a hollowness at the core of all our talk about ‘saving a life’ and ‘making a difference’. Take the example of sub-Saharan Africa. Most liberal-minded people – might I even venture to say most readers of this magazine – would consider the long-standing tradition of foreign ‘aid’ to that destitute region a worthy cause. Aid to Africa was, in fact, doubled from $25 billion to $50 billion a year at the 2005 G8 summit, and to this day it has received cash equivalent to about six or seven Marshall Plans.

What has it got to show for it? So glad you asked. Every country in the area maintains at present a life expectancy below 58 years. Half of its 600 million residents earn less than $1.25 a day, a figure that has stood unchanged since 1981. Many shipments of hard-earned cash have gone directly into the pockets of bloated autocrats or their cronies, or to ridiculous boondoggles—there exists a $5 billion dollar steel mill in Ajaokuta, Nigeria that has yet to produce a single bar of the damned stuff. (For more, make an effort to read economist William Easterly’s ‘Can the West Save Africa?’, available online.)

In other words, there is no hope for the giddy, optimistic, top-down, transformational approach the form of which most humanitarianism takes. This realization is slowly creeping up on many employed in that line of work, in particular those poor aid workers in Somalia or Nigeria who excitedly open up bags filled beyond maximum capacity with donated goods from well-meaning Westerners, to find  to their astonishment heartburn pills and high-heels sent to starving, barefoot peasants. (I urge you, on behalf of disgruntled humanitarians everywhere, the next time you rummage through your drawer or medicine cabinet for unwanted items to toss into the donation basket, to ask yourself: “Will anyone actually be able to use this?”)

Yet the resume of our good intentions is not so grim a litany as I depict it. Some aid has indeed worked. Increasing the percentage of Africans with access to clean water has been a relative success. It is due to efforts to encourage hand-washing and other hygienic practices, in addition to the building of clean infrastructure and the dispersal of cheap water purification tablets. Developing countries have also, on average, raised rates of public school enrolment faster than their counterparts in the rich world historically did—thanks, among other things, to school meals to combat nutrition, and merit scholarships to encourage the average student to work his or her gluteus to the maximus.

I do hope you cared to notice the one quality both items in this modest list of examples had in common: none of them were impositions (on the magnitude of, say, the UN Millennium Development Goals, which aimed, among other quite realistic propositions, to ‘cut world poverty in half by 2015’), but were instead nurtured, home-grown, organic: bottom-up. I don’t mean to make the assumption that the leaders of the free world are reading these words (though we all know they are), but forget about ‘saving’ the developing world. A $3 malaria net will do more for an ailing African family than endless blind commitments to rescue their entire continent ever will.

This brings me to my denouement. Do not think me someone without sympathy for the world’s suffering, those in what Shakespeare referred to in King Lear as “the poorest shape that ever penury in contempt of man brought near to beast.” At Langstaff Secondary School, there exists a newly-born and modest little organization called Gota Del Mar, of which I’m proud to have been a founding member and to which all the devoted readers of this magazine can easily contribute. (The name means ‘ocean drop’, in reference to a laconic statement that Mother Theresa of Calcutta is purported to have uttered: “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”)

Our aim is to offer rentals of beach chairs and umbrellas to residents of the town of Máncora, Peru, hit quite hard by the collapse of the local fisheries, in addition to violent El Niños and other weather aberrations. Proceeds will go towards a scholarship, which one devoted and hard-working students at any of the town’s public schools will win each year (for more information, or to donate, log on at your leisure to gotadelmar.com). Gota Del Mar is, in fact, just one charitable organization housed under the parapluie of Para el Mundo, a broader effort working toward the same goal, and responsible for, among other things, helping Máncora’s bereaved locals to start up small businesses. (You may wish to stay tuned; there is a chance that in the next issue of FORUM, I will be reporting from that very town.)

Simple, you might say. Simplistic, the more hard-headed among you might object. Yet there is no workable alternative. The wise among those living in the world’s most depraved conditions (and take my word for it, they do exist) do not desire our pity, as eager as we may be to assault them with it. They do not want to be victimized or condescended to. They would simply enjoy being able to stand on their own two feet (preferably clothed in footwear of some kind) to the extent that they could manage their own affairs, rather than having to gamble their lives on the availability of a local UN or USAID office or the shipment of worthless donations from unthinking Westerners. Towards the achievement of this we should be willing to do everything we can. We will always look ridiculous, as Orwell knew full well, when we trip over ourselves in our efforts to do good; we ought to realize that those most likely to ‘save’ Africa or Latin America may well be Africans and Latin Americans themselves.