Please understand, people, that I'm not saying poor people are ignorant by choice. Far from it! Most of them, especially in third world and communist countries, are kept ignorant by design, because it is far harder for an ignorant population to mount a successful rebellion than an educated one. In any despotic government, it is generally the educated members of the population who are most suspected of subversion, not the poor and ignorant, or uneducated.
I recall reading an article about the citizens of Moscow during the Soviet regime who would pay steep prices for contraband MAPS of their own country! The Soviet government would publish inaccurate maps to keep their people ignorant of what was over the next hill, or across the river. Even city maps of Moscow itself were almost useless.
By the same token, a great many of the oppressed peoples of Africa and Latin America are kept ignorant of the greater world around them. This is done to keep them under control. If you don't know that things can be different, then you can't try to change them.
And this is how we, the supposedly rich nations of the world, can really help the poor. Education! Information! Letting them know that there are places where things are better and they can make things better for themselves.
This is the kind of ignorance which I am talking about. The lack of information, of an awareness of something better. Those poor farmers in North Korea aren't held down just by that guy with the machine gun. They are held down by their lack of any information of anything better. Their ignorance of the world at large. Throwing money and food at them won't change that. Getting the information to them will.
The Chinese are seeing this already. They have been forced to embrace a limited form of capitalism simiply because their people have been able to learn of how the people of the West truly live. Not the propaganda their leaders have been feeding them for decades, but the truth. And the internet will ultimately be their downfall. Oh, sure, they try to censor the access their people can get. But we have all heard of how even children can bypass controls designed to restrict their access.
But all of this presupposes a desire on the part of these people to build themselves a better life. Not waiting around for a handout, but actively trying to improve themselves and their families and their neighbors. The key is not financial aid or food aid or any other kind of aid, but education! Information is the currency of the world.
And the truth shall set them free!