The role of charity groups

I watched a program recently about feeding hungry people in Kenya. Apparently Kenya is experiencing their worst drought in 20 years. The program indicated that the livestock were dying and because of that the people were starving too. This group had brought in truckloads of food and was distributing it to the people there.

What really surprised me was that there was no water being distributed, and all the food was beans, rice and dried corn. How were they going to prepare this food if they were lacking water ? My understanding is that people can live for 3 weeks without food, but only about 3 days without water. Obviously they were getting water from someone or the drought has not completely depleted their water supply.

My point here is that we are only seeing what they want us to see. They mention that they have been working in northern Kenya for over 30 years. It sees to me that in that amount of time they should have some type of self sustaining system in place . I believe the point of charity is not only to feed people but to educate them so that they can eventually support themselves. The old adage “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” is what charity should be about. Too many of the large charities appear to be more interested in propagating their organization than helping people to help theselves.