Charity, responsibility, and AID

I have not had the chance to write in a few days, life, as per usual, got in the way of best intentions. I had the chance to see an old friend in the Twin Cities (one who grew up in Central America, travels extensively, and has a great blue collar head on his shoulders) and meet a new friend. While in the cities the president of Somalia was in town to discuss plans for that country with the thousands of Somalis and other interested folks. While I did not go to the meetings or hear the address by the Somali president I did have the chance to listen to people think out loud about how Somalia, the homeless in America, and other sundry surprisingly related issues were vexing.
One of the most interesting aspects of these discussions revolved around the international development aid movement (for any number of reasons--guilt, soft power, NGO reproduction) and the continuing problem of money being used for unintended causes (e.g. corruption, warlord enrichment, ...). One side of the table (metaphorically speaking, it was actually at a bar) argued that aid fueled corruption and should be re-examined. The other side thought that aid organizations could not control uses of money and that processes internal in the receiving country had to rectify bad uses of good money.
This theme was repeated with the issue of homeless people in St. Paul. The Dorothy Day Center (the local well known center for homeless assistance) was seen as a magnet for the homeless who used the precious resources for drugs, alcohol, or for all I know Pokemon cards. A similar argument to the international aid argument was offered, that money should be withheld rather than be misspent.
These discussions/arguments arise frequently in the development-conservation-aid world and are most likely no closer to being solved than they were when they began, and indeed when they began prior to our current conceptions of aid (see Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1080/1080-h/1080-h.htm) for a scathing satire over this very issue from 1729) were formed.
Francisco Toro's outstanding blogs (http://boringdevelopment.com/ and http://850calories.com/) offer insight into the at times apparent futility of development work and I have mentioned Ed Carr's (http://www.edwardrcarr.com/opentheechochamber/) site as well. What these authors, and I guess I, have arrived at is that the key to interventions that work is helping folks achieve what they want and need. Funds may be misused or misappropriated because the intended use did not matter than much in the first place to the targeted groups or missed the mark. Your thoughts are welcome, it is late and I know I need to revisit this one.