CAMROSE, Alta. – Gerald Pilger admits he didn’t know much about Canada’s foreign aid.
He’d heard horror stories of donated Canadian grain rotting on docks in Asia and beggars in Mexico getting picked up in limousines after a day’s work.
Because of his skepticism, the Camrose farmer was one of four Canadians chosen by a Toronto film crew to visit foreign aid projects in Nepal and India for a one-hour television documentary, The Skeptics’ Journey.
His conclusion: “For the most part the money was very well used.
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“I’ve come back with the conclusion that money individuals sent to NGOs (non government organizations) is very well used. I still question the megadollars sent to governments by government,” he said.
By 1997 the Canadian government will give $2.2 billion in foreign aid, down a third from the peak year of 1991. Non governmental organizations from Canada sent millions more dollars, usually administered by organizations like Save the Children’s Fund or Primate’s World Relief.
Shocked by poverty
The month-long trip to India was like a poverty plunge for Pilger starting with a rat-infested hotel in Bombay with no doors and windows.
The film group spent 10 days in rural areas talking to farmers, community leaders and government officials about projects foreign aid money has built.
“It was exactly like talking to farmers here,” he said.
The farmers complained about marketing, no government assistance during droughts and the transportation system.
Some aid projects that worked were as simple as getting farmers together to buy insurance or to help arrange a bank loan.
“It took very little cost except for initial set-up cost.”
He also looked at massive irrigation projects to bring water to a few farmers. There he worried about the lack of testing to ensure a safe water supply.
Pilger also discovered some massive irrigation projects increased the number of rice crops farmers could grow in a year from one to three.
More work for women
One downside Pilger pointed out was that most often women are saddled with the burden of harvesting two extra crops, since they are the ones who work in the fields.
Pilger said no one seemed to have thought about the extra work until he mentioned it. “If I did any good over there it was that.”
After the 10 days in rural India they came back to Bombay to tour the slums.
“It was the longest 10 days of my life,” he said. “The stench, the garbage, the pollution. It was hard to breathe in the city. That was the worst.”
Pilger and another Vancouver student on the skeptics’ tour questioned whether a five-by-five metre tin shack built by foreign aid money in the middle of a slum was much of a school. The stifling hot, dark room wasn’t an environment for learning. But he praised a community club built for homeless children. In the club each of the children had a locker to hold their worldly possessions.
“The only time they laughed was when they were in the room.”
