Thursday, September 08, 2005

Because they are pros at that

For some reason or another, it has become very common among the NGOs around here to use the following phrase:
"Pro-Poor Policies"
To quote The Princess Bride, “Why do you keep saying that? I do not think it means what you think it means.” Let's re-try that same grammatical phrase with a different noun and you tell me if it really means what you intended:
Pro-Israel policies
Pro-Iraq War policies
Pro-murdering babies in witchcraft ceremonies under a full-moon policies
Get the picture? The prefix “pro” means that you are trying to encourage something, to make it happen more. As far as I am aware, none of the people where I work are going to fund a project to actually create more poor people.

If you want to promote pro-poor policies, I recommend talking to these people, who have done a fabulous job in that area.

4 comments:

Kate said...

Hello! No specific comments, just checking. Want to make it known that I am reading the the blog regulary, even if I don't always find reason to comment specifically.

Anonymous said...

unlike Terra....Karin

Anonymous said...

just checked your link...I love it....good old days...I can even understand it...some of it at least...Karin

Josh said...

i saw the title of the linked page as one of your word verifications once.

do you think that perhaps these ngo's are pro-poor people? if not for poor people, would they be necessary?