This chapter sets out an agenda for rethinking international aid that is relevant to rich countries and poor countries alike. Many people equate aid with charity-a one-way act of generosity directed from high-income countries to their low-income counterparts. That belief is wrong. Aid should be thought of as a hand up, not a handout- and as an investment in shared security and shared prosperity. By enabling poor people and poor countries to overcome the health, education and economic resource barriers that keep them in poverty, aid can spread the benefits of global integration, expanding shared prosperity in the process. It can also reduce the mass poverty and inequality that increasingly threaten the collective security of the international community.
