Option 5: The Human Dividend

You opened the chequebook and wrote futures into being. Scholarship streams show wide‑eyed children holding brand-new textbooks, and sentiment softens from red rage to cautious grey. Retail partners retweet the ceremony, yet insurers, unmoved by heart‑strings, tack an eight‑percent premium onto cargo because ledgers still lack birth records.

Thirty days later, €1.5 million has flowed out. R&D budgets shrink twelve percent; Golden Needle remains on the ministry watchlist. Watchdogs publish a long‑read titled Charity without Change, arguing that payments cannot substitute for audits. Procurement discovers that the mills best positioned to supply solvent‑free fibres require documented wage data before opening negotiations—a file your team cannot yet produce. Internally, some staff glow with pride; others fret that generosity is buying applause, not safety.

Goodwill bought a pause, not a pardon. The next inspector will expect comma‑perfect documents, and the funds to produce them are thinning. Without hard proof, every future promise risks being filed under wishful spending.

International guidance stresses that scholarships alone are insufficient; structural reforms are still demanded. Workers and advocates feel heard, but investors now watch closely to see if social gains can withstand the strains of the next production wave.