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Citizen aid

In: Handbook of Aid and Development

Author

Listed:
  • Allison Schnable

Abstract

Citizen aid - small-scale, privately-funded, volunteer-driven, transnational assistance - aims to “cut out the middlemen” between aid givers and receivers. This chapter describes the scope of citizen aid and makes three claims that highlight its distinctions from conventional, professionalized aid. First, citizen aid is driven not just by a desire to help, but by a desire to connect. This drive to create personal relationships with recipients also makes citizen aid practices in fundraising, monitoring, and evaluation diverge from professionalized actors. Second, freed of the professionalized development field’s pressures, citizen aid givers articulate a vision of development that emphasizes individual transformation. Third, citizen aid efforts typically work in isolation from existing development institutions - making it difficult to collaborate for broader development goals. These characteristics of citizen aid shed light on a tension at the heart of the public’s support for aid: whether aid is essentially a technocratic project or a moral, expressive one.

Suggested Citation

  • Allison Schnable, 2024. "Citizen aid," Chapters, in: Raj M. Desai & Shantayanan Devarajan & Jennifer L. Tobin (ed.), Handbook of Aid and Development, chapter 17, pages 275-287, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:20736_17
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    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781800886810.00024
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