I moved to St Petersburg, Russia in 1989. The place was a mess. It was a few years removed from the break up of the Soviet Union and their cancer wards were filled with people dying of leukemia, etc after Chernobyl. I went there to bring in medical aid, including medication that was tremendously effective in treating leukemia. We also brought in food and clothing aid.
What I witnessed completely broke my heart. Almost none of the food and clothing aid went to its purpose. Not even 10% of it. There was a pecking order for the vultures who would take their bounty from the containers - customs, city officials, Orthodox Church, market sellers. At the end, you had a few torn shirts and unmatched shoes. That went to the needy. The food was the same.
We had to pay tremendous fees to "Consultants" and brand all the distribution boxes for the Orthodox Church to get the medication off the dock. then, the Church SOLD it to the hospitals.
I have lived in Russia, Ukraine, Kenya and Ghana. It's the same everywhere. Foreign aid, whether sovereign or private, is a massive money laundering scam. It actually makes the lives of the actual people much worse. Those profiting from our conscience-salving donations are financially motivated to make human suffering as bad as possible to perpetuate their racket.
Red Cross, US Aid, all the pathetic billionaire foundations, 100% of all of it - scam. You can tell they are a scam, because they are still in operation. There are millions of wonderful small scale operations. 100% of large scale operations are money laundering, life destroying, human trafficking scams.
Just go to charitynavigator.org (maybe dot.com, can't remember) to see how charities spend their donations. The big ones like Red Cross, American Cancer Society, and worst of all, United Way, spend most of the money they receive, for fund-raising activities, and paying their highly overpaid executives! I found a small non-profit in Maine once that was paying their director $200,000/year! I contacted some local newspapers to report it, and then about a year later, the salary was cut to $100,000, so yes, you can put a dent in some of the fraud out there. There is a series of "charity" events called "Corporate Challenge" races, they make 10s of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, from each race, held in large cities all over the world. When I tried to look into their finances, it was unavailable because they aren't a 501-c3? charity, so the charitynavigator site doesn't have data on them. But when I calculated the amount of money they would make from a given race, versus what all the race entries added up to, it was a ridiculous amount that was ripe for fraudulent taking. I imagine someone in the corporation that runs each race, names someone "race director" for a nice little bonus for probably not doing much. At least I'm not disgusted by bogus charities and the people who rip others off in the name of compassion :)