Aid Thoughts

I stumbled upon this today. What is it? It's a new charity campaign called Teddy Bears of Hope, started by the sitting Miss Teen Ottawa. The purpose of, *ahem* Teddy Bears of Hope is to provide the children of Uganda with (surprise) teddy bears. Aside from the thousands of teddy bears Ms. Ottawa has collected, she's also raised $4,000.... which she plans to spend on more teddy bears.

Miss Ottawa, have you thought this through? While his is undoubtedly a sweet gesture, we economists just don't do sweet. Where, might I ask, is the RCT impact assessment of the teddy bear intervention? Perhaps it would make more sense to have some sort of nominal fee for the teddy bears, to prevent snuggle dependence and deter families from turning Winnie the Pooh into a chitenge. Is this is a scalable intervention? At what stage would you expect the Ugandan government to take over? Have you considered the impact on local teddy bear sellers? What's your Givewell rating?

Perhaps you should consider channelling your resources through another bilateral? I've heard good things about Clowns-without-borders, Operation Sock Monkey, and, of course, WAVES for Development. If none of these suite your fancy, you could hand over your teddies to the Enough Project, who will know how handle the distribution in a sensitive manner.

These issues aside, kudos to you: I grew up in South Carolina, where our Miss Teen contender would have little luck finding Uganda on a map.