From Sharon Hartmann:

[On Dale's concern about paternalism:]

I understand your argument, and to some extent I sympathize with it,
but I do think that Marty's reply that selection of materials was made
by the recipients without input from us, answers much of it.  They
select what they want.  We don't ever make the selections.  We ask
them to account for receipt of the items they requested and we paid
for.  That happens in all granting organizations that I have any
knowledge of including the US government in dealing with its own
schools in the USA.  I have spent a lot of time accounting for receipt
of items purchased with federal funds for use in California schools.
I may have wished that they would just trust me, so that I could save
the time, but they never did.

I also do not think that your plan responds to the pervasive
embezzlement, fraud, theft, and subornation of funds issues that
plague East Africa.  Of course,this well nigh universal theft arises
out of desperate need, but we are not sending items there to ease
universal poverty.  We are trying to help schools. You heard Bill
Jones address this during our meeting.  He went so far as to say that
even family members might not be trustworthy where large sums of money
were involved.  People I know who have themselves visited East African
schools and offered to help them have been told not to bother sending
items to those exact schools from the USA because the items will be
stolen, long, long before they reach the needy school.  I know of
people who made arrangements to hand-carry specific items from Dar to
Iringa to assure that they actually got there.  The school was
grateful that the items actually arrived - not offended that they were
delivered by hand.  That is why TEAA has gone to such trouble to
identify the exact chains of delivery and to verify receipt at eachf
with the item and claim that the boxes arrived empty.  This is true at
every stop along the way, up to and including the school itself.

I think our choice is to send items with strict step by step
accountability or not to send them.  I prefer the former.