This column expresses skepticism about development work, not disaster relief. Although my time in Namibia left me with reservations about the former, I have no doubt that the latter saves innumerable lives and rebuilds devastated communities. Relief efforts are especially essential in times like these, and if any of you haven’t yet contributed to organizations working in China or Myanmar — or even if you have — doing so would be a shining example of a moral action. Just five or ten dollars could do a world of good.

But development work is a different story. Doing development work in Namibia hardened me as much as it inspired me. I still believe that, in the words of Robert F. Kennedy, “each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy these ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of resistance.” Lofty rhetoric aside, I can’t shake the feeling that much of the work that NGOs and development organizations are engaged in is of questionable value.

30,000 children die every year from extreme poverty. Those of us in this line of work — and many of the rest of us with a conscience — firmly believe that changing this dire situation is the moral obligation of our generation. To that end, over the past five decades, the Western World has spent approximately $2.3 trillion dollars on foreign aid. What’s recognized rarely, if ever, is that econometricians have failed to find any evidence of a positive effect of foreign aid on economic growth.

More qualified people have written tomes about how and why we have gone wrong. For starters, Bill Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good lays out a pretty strong case that aid efforts such as the Millennium Development Goals fail because they lack “customer feedback, incentives and accountability.”

What I’m more interested in exploring are the reasons why, based on my experience, so few people involved in development or public interest work — myself included — openly grapple with the frequent futility of our work.

One practical reason for this phenomenon, in my opinion, is that deliverables in this line of work are very hard to measure, especially in the short-term. Maybe as a result of our efforts in Namibia, local magistrates will have an easier time accessing current statutory and case law and will thus be able to better implement the law. If this ever happens, though, it will be years down the road, we’ll never really know about it and our part in improving their lot will be minimal.

A more abstract rationale for our selective blindness is the comfort we generally take in having the best of intentions. Ten Stanford Law Students traveled to Africa with the noble goal of helping out those who are severely disadvantaged, and our sacrifices for this work pale in comparison to others who work for other human rights and development organizations. As human beings, I think it’s hard to square away our fervent devotion to undeniably just causes and the very real chance that our net impact on the ground may be negligible.

Most importantly, I’d submit that a prerequisite for this type of work is a deeply grounded faith in humanity and optimism about the future. If I didn’t believe that life actually could be significantly better for the worst off in our country and around the globe, I would go corporate and never look back. This hope for the betterment of mankind doesn’t easily mesh with our stark failures in helping developing countries over the past few decades.

To be clear, I’m not advocating defeatism or pessimism. My only point is this: now that we Stanford Law students have left Namibia, our projects might fall apart or simply be in vain. If this is true, then the last thing we should do as we walk away is pat ourselves on the back.

Seriously, let’s donate something to disaster relief efforts. More info at vishnus "at" stanford.edu.