	Bob Hostetler > Writing

Those Stingy Americans

by Bob Hostetler

Last Sunday a massive earthquake and resulting tidal waves shook southeast Asia, costing tens of thousands of lives (the casualty figure rises daily). On Monday the Bush Administration pledged $15 million of humanitarian aid to the nations in that devastated region. Also on Monday a United Nations official named Jan Egeland reportedly called the U.S. (and other Western nations) "stingy" with relief funds, pointing out that many of those countries give only a tiny percentage of their gross national income to humanitarian aid. He has since said that his remarks were "misinterpreted."

Misinterpreted or not, let's consider the facts. A day after the horrific events-before the death tally was even half complete-the U.S. pledged $15 million (which by Wednesday became $35 million), sent a team of twenty-one emergency relief experts to the region, and dispatched nine patrol planes and twelve cargo planes to the area. And Powell clearly left the door open for further measures, "but it will take a while to make sure we have a good understanding of what the needs are."

Now, I'm no expert on this by any means, but that strikes me as a good beginning (particularly since we're the largest contributor so far, promising about nine times more than the European Union, which has a larger economy than the U.S.). And it should be noted it is a contribution in addition to the United States' other foreign aid loans and grants, such as our contribution of 57 percent (i.e., the largest) of the World Food Program's budget to help feed 104 million people in 81 countries, sending nearly six million metric tons of food to the hungry in other parts of the world, and our contribution of hundreds of millions of dollars to the global AIDS fund (we're the largest contributor there, too).

The U.S. foreign aid average of roughly $10 billion a year increased in recent years to $15 billion annually (see usaid.gov). Of course, much of that aid is in areas where the U.S. has an economic or strategic interest. But then, it would be a difficult task indeed for the world's lone superpower to avoid areas where we have an economic or strategic interest.

And, it must be admitted that the U.S.'s foreign aid is a very small percentage of our gross national product. There are ways we could rectify that situation (with higher taxes, for example, as Mr. Egeland actually suggested in his initial comments), but unlike our European and Japanese counterparts, Americans give far more through private endeavors than through their government.

Americans give privately several times the total of U.S. official foreign aid, in such forms as:

U.S. foundations give $1.5 billion internationally every year
U.S. businesses give at least $2.8 billion annually to overseas projects
American non-government organizations give over $6.6 billion in grants, goods and volunteers
Religious groups contribute $3.4 billion for health care, literacy training, relief and development
U.S. colleges grant $1.3 billion in scholarships to foreign students
Individual contributions from the U.S. to developing countries come to approximately $18 billion a year.

Add it up. That's more than $33 billion. And much of it without the bureaucratic overhead of government efforts (or, in the case of many United Nations efforts, corruption). For example, World Relief is an organization, based in Baltimore, that works with local church communities to address poverty, disease, hunger, persecution and the effects of war and disaster in some of the world's most critical regions. Through World Relief, individuals and non-government organizations contribute more than $15 million a year to international efforts, such as giving practical and technical aid to thousands of farming families or training families and communities to curb the spread of AIDS and more effectively care for its victims. In fact, just now as I was typing this article, I received an email from World Relief about their work with indigenous partners in the southeast Asia disaster, focusing on India and Sri Lanka (donations can be made via www.wr.org).

You can also be confident that The Salvation Army is there already. Their local officers and soldiers in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and India (three of the more than one hundred countries in which that organization works) were probably at many of the disaster sites before United Nations officials were briefed. Salvation Army volunteers are feeding thousands in the Kanyakumari and Muttom areaas of India and sheltering others in their southeast Asia and coastal India facilities (donations can be made via www.salvationarmyusa.org).

One more example (among many) is Samaritan's Purse, a nondenominational Christian organization that provides spiritual and physical aid to hurting people in more than 110 nations, to the tune of more than $200 million annually. Founded by Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham), Samaritan's Purse quickly deployed emergency teams to Sri Lanka and Indonesia to help provide emergency food, temporary shelter, water filtration units, and medicine. The organization is also providing assistance through Christian partners in India and Thailand (donations can be made via www.samaritanspurse.org).

These are just three examples, among many, of American compassion and magnanimity, not only in times of disaster, but all year round, and year after year. Sure, it's not as much as it could be. Perhaps even not as much as it should be. But where would the world be without it?

This article appeared in the December 31, 2004 edition of the Hamilton Journal-News.

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