You have been with us from the start. Now help us grow.

Dear friend,

You already know me.

You have been reading this newsletter for a while now, and I am grateful for that. More grateful than I probably say.

You have stayed with me through the reports, the statistics, the uncomfortable truths about a system I spent 50 years working inside. You have read things that most people in this sector would rather not say publicly. And you have kept opening these emails.

That means something.

But I want to be honest with you today about where we are, and where I want to go.

THIS IS BIGGER THAN ME

I have spent decades making this argument. In committee rooms. In published books. In field reports that gathered dust on shelves.

The argument has not changed. The system is still failing the people it claims to help. Aid seldom works, not because donors do not care, but because the system was not designed to transform anything.

Many among you have had similar experiences, leading you to consider protesting against a system that is fundamentally at odds with your values and the interests of those you wish to serve. Please let us join forces.

I have been privileged to work at the coal face of poverty for 50 years. I have occasionally been able to help. But I am frustrated at the way power has played with everybody, the donors who gave in good faith, and the people at the bottom of the pyramid who are getting poorer by the day because the organisations that should have been on their side have failed them.

So I am asking you today to help me make this bigger.

WHAT I HAVE DISCOVERED

Fifty years across 35 African countries has given me a specific kind of knowledge. Firsthand. Documented. Uncomfortable.

I have watched aid money arrive and disappear into overhead. I have watched well-intentioned organisations quietly relieve governments of the accountability they should be held to. I have watched the same crises repeat, in the same places, funded by the same donors, run by the same sector, with the same results.

These are not opinions. They are observations I made with my own eyes, in rooms most people never get access to.

And I know that many of you, reading this right now, have made similar observations.

I SUSPECT SOME OF YOU HAVE SEEN THIS TOO

You may have worked in this sector. You may have given to it for years and quietly wondered why nothing seems to change. You may have sat in meetings where the questions I am asking were in the room but nobody said them out loud.

If that is you, I want to hear from you.

Not to agree with me. To add to the conversation. To share what you saw, what you questioned, what you could not say in the rooms you were in.

This movement grows when more voices join it. Your experience, whether it confirms what I have found or challenges it, belongs in this conversation. Open, transparent, honest. That is what this has always been about.

Reply to this email. Tell me what you have seen.

ONE SIMPLE THING I AM ASKING

Follow us on social media.

I know that sounds small. It is not.

Every time you follow, share, comment or question what we post, you are putting this conversation in front of someone who has never heard it. Someone who has been donating in good faith for years and has always sensed something was off. Someone who works inside an NGO and privately agrees but cannot say so publicly.

That person needs to find us. You can help them do that.

Follow Fight Global Poverty on LinkedIn and Instagram. Follow my personal LinkedIn for the unfiltered version.

And when you see something we post that makes you think, share it. Comment on it. Push back on it. Ask the question underneath it.

That is all a movement needs to grow. People willing to say out loud what they already know privately.

Why are people still in poverty after 50 years and billions of pounds of aid?

That question deserves an answer. Help us demand one. With gratitude,

Benny Dembitzer

Development Economist

Author of four books on global poverty and aid

Part of the team awarded the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize