Travis said:
If the money get's to people of mozambique fine, money is a bandaid it allways will be.
That's not accurate. Money can bring real change because it can pay for education and appropriate technologies.
The only way AIDS will be stopped in Africa is through lifestyle changes, just like the gays in America changed their lifestyle which slow down the AIDS epidemic, throwing condoms at them is not going to stop it.
Condom use was a major factor in getting AIDS under control here. So were things like needle exchange programs.
Gays in North America generally have access to, and enough money to pay for, condoms. In addition to that, there are many free condom distribution programs in North America. Programs like that are being denied to the people of Africa.
Annabattler said:
As with most things,the answers to their troubles must come from the affected populations...if it's not a home grown solution,it will not work,no matter how much money we throw at it.
That's increasingly difficult because there is a generation that is pretty much missing. That generation are the working people...the doctors, teachers, nurses, farmers, whatever.
Those that remain need help...a lot of help...from the outside. Even little things like radio shows that educate help a lot because it helps people to learn not just about AIDS, but about basic things like traditional farming techniques, that are not being passed down because so much of one generation is dead.
The answers have to come from within, but the aid has to come from without.
A quick, non-AIDS example. A lot of villages had no way to shell peanuts, a food staple in that area as well as a cash crop. These people were peanut-dependent. They had been displaced so often and so much of the population was missing from AIDS and war that they simply lacked the manpower.
A couple of aid workers got together with an engineer friend and designed a machine, made mostly out of concrete, that shelled peanuts. They tried it out and the people who were going to be using it made some suggestions. They revised it accordingly. It is simple, cheap to build, easy to maintain, and made out of locally available materials.
The people who needed the aid identified the problem and their input was used to revise the machine, but they lacked the skills to design it and build it. They now have they skills to build more.