From today’s NYT: “CARE, one of the world’s biggest charities, is walking away from some $45 million a year in federal financing, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but also may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.”

“If someone wants to help you, they shouldn’t do it by destroying the very thing that they’re trying to promote,” said George Odo, a CARE official who grew disillusioned with the practice while supervising the sale of American wheat and vegetable oil in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

International aid needs to get more economically savvy, and in a hurry, lest unintended consequences like the ones moving CARE to wean itself from the government teat continue to undermine well-intentioned efforts across the globe.

Some charities are accused of supporting the government’s practices because it keeps them afloat.

“What’s happened to humanitarian organizations over the years is that a lot of us have e contractors on behalf of the government,” said Mr. Odo of CARE. “That’s sad but true. promised our ability to speak up when things went wrong.” In other words, NGOs have effectively been bought off.

“Sure it’s self-interest if staying in business to help the hungry is self-interested,” said Avram E. Guroff, a senior official at ACDI/VOCA, which ranked sixth in such sales last year. “We’re not lining our pockets.”

But, as Augustine would say, and as CARE seems to be realizing, economic self-sufficiency ought to be the goal, rather than creating cycles of dependence by destroying entrepreneurial viability abroad:

A person who sorrows for someone who is miserable earns approval for the charity he shows, but if he is genuinely merciful he would far rather there were nothing to sorrow about. If such a thing as spiteful benevolence existed (which is impossible, of course, but supposing it did), a genuinely and sincerely merciful person would wish others to be miserable so that he could show them mercy! (Confessions 3.2.3)

As you may already know, Acton’s Samaritan Award and Samaritan Guide recognize charities who take little or no government funding and mitted to moving those toward independence.

Update: There’s a brief summary of CARE’s decision in this Marketplace piece: “The issue will be part of the congressional Farm Bill debate next month.”