Book Description

Who could forget the searing images and heartfelt emotions stirred up by 2005's Live 8 benefit? The message was simple: let's make poverty history. Hundreds of thousands of well-meaning people from all over North America and Europe responded with an outpouring of donations. It was a remarkable display of compassion. Heads of state who assembled at the most recent G8 conference posed in front of the cameras to proclaim the West's determination to eliminate poverty in Africa. Leaders of the richest countries in the world agreed that it was incumbent upon them to come to the aid of the poorest countries in the world. But as Giles Bolton makes so heartbreakingly clear in this compelling and at times angry manifesto, virtually nothing has changed. Drawing on his experience at ground zero of the international humanitarian aid movement, Bolton provides a simple, succinct but comprehensive guide to the complex reality of the aid industry in Africa. What really happens to your aid money? Where does the money go? How do globalization and trade regulations exacerbate the problem? How do government agencies waste and squander your money? In part the memoir of a dedicated, idealistic aid worker and in part a frustrated and angry jeremiad of a jaded political bureaucrat. Giles Bolton's Poor Story is a clarion call to everyone in the West to wise up to the reality of international aid, and a passionate and heartfelt plea to effect change and real relief'¦before it is too late.