Ego is a natural part of all of us, and it helps to inform the decisions we make in all of our interactions with others, no matter our profession or lifestyle. In the field of development and humanitarian aid, there is no shortage of personal incentives - martyrdom, hero complex, etc. - and there is certainly no shortage of criticism of those motivations.

This morning Blood and Milk's post addressed a recent misjudgment made by Enough (an organization that addresses genocide and crimes against humanity, especially in the Darfur region). Essentially, Enough brought a number of Knicks jerseys to a refugee camp in Eastern Chad and allowed the children to fight over who got to keep those jerseys. Check out the post for more details, as well as a quote from the Enough website (http://bloodandmilk.org/?p=1371). I would imagine that for a child who has struggled to survive so many of his days, small luxuries like these jerseys are proof that someone, somewhere is paying attention. However, the Enough workers were not aware of the ramifications of too little candy for too many kids. Blood and Milk outlines several other logistical approaches that could have avoided a pile of children righting for their gifts, which are all great ideas. However, what struck me most about this post is how often and easily priorities get confused in humanitarian aid. In this situation, what should have been the first priority - the happiness of all the refugee children - took a back seat to some more self-centered motives. That's fine! It's a mistake and should be rectified, but it won't work to simply cut ego out of aid. Instead, we need to be aware of all of our motives and make our decisions with intention.

Pilot

I have spent a long time trying to imagine a way to streamline this blog - give it a specific subject and theme. However, I have come to realize that I tend to ramble on tangents in nearly all of my daily conversations, and have given up hope of a focused and efficient blog. What I am going to try to do is to approach various topics of human rights and environmental current events, and to approach them from the point of view of someone who knows very little about these subjects. This is a space where anyone can ask any question without having to feel embarrassed by their lack of knowledge - you can e-mail me or just post a comment and I will do my best to address that issue. Hopefully we can all learn something more about our surroundings and ourselves.