Grassroots International

CARE has been "helping" people in the Northwest for decades. But each year, the misery of the people of the Northwest increases. What is the real impact of this aid? To make people more dependent, more vulnerable, more on the margins?...The aid is not given in such a way as to give the people responsibility, to make them less dependent....This is what you call "commercializing" poverty....The people's misery should not be marketed.... - Samuel Madisten, Haitian Senator

In 1997, Grassroots International released a research study entitled "Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: USAID Policies in Haiti." Offering an in-depth examination of USAID development policies in Haiti, the study concluded that, as the title suggests, official aid actually damaged the very aspects of Haitian society it was allegedly trying to fix – namely it created a lack of democracy and too much dependency.