The economic crisis in recent years has certainly contributed to an increase in the unemployment rate in Italy—especially among youth—which has led to a surge of junior professionals aspiring to enter the world of international cooperation through internship experiences. This enormous availability of low-cost human resources has been exploited by most Italian non-governmental organizations in the sector to recover a component that has largely disappeared from international volunteering: that of gratuity.

From this perspective, investment in key areas of humanitarian aid has diminished: first in the identification and formulation of intervention strategies and programs, and then, of course, in the professional training of senior operators. Today, we are witnessing a decline in the qualitative profiles of human resources employed in humanitarian aid and development cooperation, to the advantage of a quantitative increase in low-cost personnel, who, given the complexity of the scenarios in which they operate, are logically the cause of increasingly poor results in terms of effectiveness and sustainability of the actions implemented for the benefiting contexts.

We would like to remind everyone of the phrase by J. Ruskin (1819-1900): “The norm in business excludes the possibility of receiving much by paying little. It is simply impossible.” In light of a strong rejection of reducing less developed countries to an OUTLET, AL.TA SARL urges caution against the temptation of LOW-COST COOPERATION and hopes that the major Italian NGOs, which have historically shaped cooperation in the world, will return to favoring criteria of OPERATIONAL QUALITY through investments that enhance historically more experienced and technically better-prepared individuals to assume high-responsibility project roles.