Handouts

Handouts

I realize my last post might have been confusing, so I thought I would clarify a few points on giving out food and handouts in general.

Some of the development literature out there takes a fervent stance against giving anything out for free, believing that will do nothing but develop a culture of dependency. There is some truth to this, but I think many of the distain for handouts is taken a little too far. In one book I read the author made an impassioned argument that handouts on enable destructive behaviors, and then talked about his work at a soup kitchen. Feeding the homeless a “handout”, shelters are handing out food for free to the homeless population. To really understand the implication of giving a “handout” and whether or not it is a good thing to do, the term handout must first be defined. 

The traditional definition of a handout is a something that is freely given to another person. This is a definition used in some of the development literature I have read and it is problematic because it is very broad. By this definition we give out hundreds of handouts in America, and most people would agree these handouts are good things. Probably one of the most popular handouts in American culture is public education. Any child can go to school for thirteen at no cost. Yes, parents have to pay taxes, but you’re taxes are in no way connected to your child’s schooling. Every household has to pay taxes regardless of whether or not they have children in the school system. If a child receives additional services from the school, the family pays no additional taxes. We give lots of handouts on the college level. I went to college on a scholarship and most of my friends in college either had scholarships or grants funding part of their college education. SCHIP, children’s health insurance, is also another hand out given to poor children who can’t afford healthcare. I don’t think anyone would say that scholarships, public education, or state funded child health care are inherently destructive. These aren’t the type of handouts those in development circles are complaining about, but they fall under the broad definition. This causes real confusion for anyone trying to implement a development projects.

There are many different types of handouts given in the La Croix community that really benefit the community. There are over a thousand kids who are sponsored and have their tuition paid for by American families. Some of these kids, when they complete school, continue to be sponsored in their university studies. Dr. Abel, one of the best doctors at the clinic, was a product of the La Croix school system and the mission sponsored his medical training in Port Au Prince. There is no charge for anyone to stay in the Community of Hope, the mission’s residential assistance community. The families there have to follow certain rules, but they don’t have to pay for anything. This is a really great program and helps many families from going homeless.

“Handouts” or giving people things free becomes problematic when it won’t help them open up new opportunities for themselves. At the heart of it, poverty in Haiti is a lack of opportunities. People are poor because they most money they can make is just enough to avoid starvation. People work as hard as they can, but because they are uneducated, because they are apart of a stagnant economy, because of so many reasons, the only job way they can put food on the table is by farming, it’s the best remunerative opportunity they have. 

A handout that affects their scope of opportunity, a handout that creates new opportunities, will be beneficial for the individual and the community. Education is the best example of something that can open up opportunities. Any child able to graduate high school has hundreds more opportunities than the average Haitian. Even if a child can only do basic arithmetic, he or she can be more productive dealing with money at the market and help his or her parents avoid errors in calculating their earnings. Education however is not the only handout that is beneficial. Paul and Sandy Conley, two members of Westminster Presbyterian Church and two of people helping me with my work here, gave a girl that they sponsor a sewing machine. This is huge for her. She has a baby so she can’t really go to school, and she doesn’t really have any way to accumulate enough money to buy a sewing machine. Having a sewing machine will help her start a small seamstress business out of her house, enabling her to take make a greater income than if she was left to her own devices.

Of course, not all handouts affect the opportunities open to a person, and these are the types of handouts that can be harmful. The best example I can give of this is food distribution. If we give out too much food rice, we might feed some people, but we will also drag the price of rice down. This affects everyone selling rice. We might temporarily satisfy one group’s hunger, but at the expense of another group’s ability to feed themselves.

An easy way to evaluate a handout’s effectiveness is consider how you are changing the incentives of the people with whom you are interacting and what would have happened had the handout not been given. Take the example of food distribution. If we give out food indiscriminately, then we give people incentive to not go to the market. This will cause the price of rice to drop, negatively affecting those selling food at the market. Does this mean we should never give away food? No, we just have to organize the food distribution without creating an incentive to avoid the market. The mission has done this in the past, by giving away rice to families who have been negatively affected by some natural disaster or have lost their crops from some unfortunate circumstance. These people are in a position where they can’t afford to go to the market; they can’t really afford to do anything. If we give them rice, then they are going to be able to eat. If we don’t give them rice then they’ll be stuck not eating. These people’s incentive to go to the market isn’t affected because it’s not an option

There are enough NGOs in Haiti (over 10,000) that people have begun to expect free stuff from the “blans”. Some of the NGOs help people open new opportunities, but too many times aid organizations just pass out stuff for free without any discretion. Indiscriminately giving out free things is nice, but it doesn’t give Haitians any incentive to buy Haitian made things, it creates an incentive to withdrawal from the local Haitian economy, it gives people a reason stop buying stuff made by Haitians. This has been going on for so long that Haitians have begun to expect free stuff from any aid organization. People feel that maybe, if they just ask enough Americans, they can get something for free.

So why shouldn’t you give candy to Haitian kids? Because it enforces the notion that we are here to just give stuff away. It reinforces the expectation that if a boy or girl just ask enough American aid workers, they’ll get something for free. We don’t want kids to just get free stuff, it doesn’t open up any new opportunities, and it doesn’t affect their ability to get out of poverty. Empowering people with new opportunities, truly ending poverty, starts with things like education, not candy.