On the Road to Change

Did you ever wonder what happens with the money you, me and everyone around us donates to charity? Or where all the millions of dollars go to that our governments spend on developmental aid? And even more important - does it eventually reach the people it is supposed to and does it actually help them?

In order to get answers to these questions, we - Mathijs Kros and Laura van der Reijden - will go on a 5 month long journey from Cairo to Capetown by car, starting coming January. During this time we will do evaluating research on site in 5 African countries about the works of developmental aid. Concerning this topic we will go in dialogue with NGO-employees, governmental players and especially the aid-receivers. The discrepancies that occur and the goals that are reached when issues are being dealt with from these multiple angles is exactly what we want to map out.

Here, we do not want to focus on why things go wrong or right, but on what goes wrong or right. By doing this, we can evaluate the happenings concerning developmental aid in an objective manner, which we will present on our blog, in articles and in a documentary. Informing, evaluating and eye-opening are our three main goals here. And eventually, our gained information can be practically implemented in situations where change is needed.

Hence, we will follow a route down the lane of developmental aid in Africa, which is what we see as the road to change.