There is this saying, maybe some of you know it. Goes something like this: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Give a man a fishing rod, and he will trade it for a fish! This is because man is lazy and will always have his hand out as long as there are hand-outs.
It wont solve the worlds problems, but it will at make Bitcoin mainstream.
I kind of think that concept can solve those problems, but I also agree with the thread's basic premise too.
We can't solve this issue sufficiently well in time for when cryptocurrency over-trumps fiat. Not in 2 years, 5 or 10. So something's gotta be done in the short term, however small. But we must change this dependency culture in the future, and I think the crypto-revolution in general will help to encourage that more than perhaps any awareness campaign ever could.
Next problem: who runs the fund? To who can we trust to distribute these hardship donations? I'm thinking along the lines of, no-one! Maybe these need to be super-localised, someone needs to step up in every locality that covers x thousand people. Kind of removes the temptation toward sticky fingered types.