Aid and development are terms with moving borders and much overlap.

Aid[edit | edit source]

Aid tends to refer to official development assistance and sometimes to relief efforts by private charities. The emphasis of the word is on "help" when it is desperately needed, rather than empowerment or long-term capacity building. It may be in response to a crisis, or

The urgency sometimes leads to a demand for compromise, with principles needing to be moderated in order to get things done (food distributed, and shelter erected and other logistical challenges

Note that some "aid agencies" are actually more focused on development work - the AID in USAID and AusAID both derive from "Agency for International Development".

Development[edit | edit source]

Development, or "international development," tends to refer to longer term projects to overcome poverty, through many means such as improving public health, education and productivity. These in turn have many facets - for example health is influenced by water, sanitation, handwashing, indoor smoke from cookstoves, nutrition and many more. Being longer term projects, there is less urgent empowerment or long-term capacity building.

See also[edit | edit source]

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Authors Chris Watkins
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 3 pages link here
Aliases Development aid
Impact 380 page views
Created January 28, 2010 by Chris Watkins
Modified September 17, 2022 by Irene Delgado
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