I agree 100%. Local, personalized charities is where it's at. A friend of mine and myself did that last year. Bought food for an African village and he delivered it himself. No Red Cross, no nothing. Just buying water, grains, etc and handing it over.
Now until August, I worked in legal and regulatory in London and I was making a lot of money. Most of my colleagues made a lot of money, too. Most of them always talked about how taxes were taking food out of their mouthes and into the mouthes of bums and claimed that it should all be charity driven. My problem with this is that not a single one of these assholes would ever consider giving to a charity even if they weren't taxed, because people in general were "beneath" them. That's why I think we need a mix of private charity and government handouts.
We can discuss implementation of government initiatives at a later stage.