Those of you familiar with the TDC team know that at least once a year we look at what we are really bringing to the table with all of TDC’s programs, and what we can do to improve and work towards our vision, a world in which the allocation of every bit of passion and effort and dollar of aid dedicated to moving families out of poverty is guided by what works. This time our discussions revolved around the question, why would a student choose the $2 a Day Challenge over Live below the Line?

In short, we have three major advantages: 

1.      At its core, the $2 a Day Challenge is an educational exercise.  

It started in a classroom (fall 2006), and even with its evolution outside of class there are a minimum of two discussion nights that focus on increasing the value of the experience for participants. There is no doubt that it also succeeds at raising funds and awareness about global poverty.  However, the reason we continue to run, improve, and market this program to others is because of its unparalleled ability to engender empathy and humility among its participants.

2.      Our week addresses many additional aspects of poverty and creates a community.

We ask participants to go beyond the constraint of living on $2 per day for food and hygiene products.  Among other rules, students are asked to build makeshift shelters on campus, to choose a spigot on campus as the one and only place for participants to gain access to water, and to boil water before consuming it. 

Through these constraints we create interdependence among the participants.  Building shelters, gaining reliable access to water, and being able to make bulk purchases at the grocery store requires cooperation.  By creating the need for cooperation, we build a community. 

3.      We question ourselves, our efforts, and the effectiveness of the organization receiving donations.

With our community in place, we have a space where participants find the comfort to honestly ask themselves “why am I here?” and “what do I hope to accomplish?”  They also find the confidence to challenge each other’s assumptions and preconceived notions regarding global poverty.  Every discussion at the shelters (which we have many) is an opportunity to probe deeper into the complexity of the process of economic development and our role (if any) in that process. 

One of our favorite readings to discuss is Ivan Illich’s “To Hell with Good Intentions”.  Ben Saunders, one of our former participants turned board of director, said it best when he stated that the $2 a Day Challenge “asks its participants to see that a central reason good intentions will fail in their realization is due to an inability to self-critique. By forcing students outside of their comfort zone, many realize that the limited poverty they do endure is such a struggle, that to really know poverty would be beyond their comprehension.” 

Each year TDC graduates a cohort of $2 a Day participants steeped in critical thinking skills, highly attuned to the possible inadequacies of their efforts to take on global poverty, and humbled by their participation. We believe that empathy and humility make for a good starting point when taking on global poverty. 

TDC Team

We were worried though, we found it just before the deadline for applications. However, ThinkImpact agreed to give an extension to TDC fans! Enter code TDC2012, and you have until March 4, 2012 to apply!

Experience the Innovation Institute from ThinkImpact on Vimeo.

You can go to www.ThinkImpact.com and explore from there or jump straight to the FAQs on the program, and then apply!

The growing community of students and professionals who are turning their attention to social endeavors as careers is inspiring. As someone who made the career switch from strategy consulting to international development work, I remember all too well the anxiety of trying to understand the different theories, familiarize myself with the players, and become fluent in the languages of this community. In addition to listening more than speaking, cultivating curiosity, and abandoning the fear of looking stupid when asking, “What does [fill in the blank] mean?”—in my first years in this new space, I asked for recommendations of books that would provide a foundation for my understanding of development, aid, and poverty. I recently revisited these recommendations as a member of the Opportunity Collaboration, and the following is a suggested reading list to provide a foundation for your adventures.

The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006)
by William Easterly
Easterly, a celebrated economist, presents one side in what has become an ongoing debate with fellow star-economist Jeffrey Sachs about the role of international aid in global poverty. Easterly argues that existing aid strategies have not and will not reduce poverty, because they don’t seriously take into account feedback from those who need the aid and because they perpetuate western colonial tendencies.

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (2006)
by Jeffrey Sachs
Taking an almost entirely diametrical approach than Easterly, Sachs outlines a detailed plan to help the poorest of the poor reach the first rung on the ladder of economic development. By increasing aid significantly to provide the basic infrastructure and human capital for markets to work effectively, Sachs argues such investment is not only economically sound but a moral imperative.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (2007)
by Paul Collier
Economist and Africa expert Collier analyzes why a group of 50 nations, home to the poorest one billion people, are failing. Considering issues such as civil war, dependence on extractive industries, and bad governance, he argues that the strongest industrialized countries must enact a plan to help with international policies and standards.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (2009)
by C.K. Prahalad
Prahalad, a business strategy professor, was among the first to argue that the fastest growing market in the world was made up of the world’s poorest people. He details the purchasing power of this segment, and advocates that big businesses should learn how to understand this population’s needs in order to develop products that address both economic mobility and corporate growth and profit.

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism (2009)
by Muhammad Yunus
Yunus, an economist and Nobel Prize Winner, was among the first to describe a social business as one that is modestly profitable but designed primarily to address a social objective. Using this approach, he argues that modern-day capitalism is too narrowly defined, particularly in its emphasis on profit maximization. By including social benefits in the equation, he believes that markets and the poor themselves can alleviate poverty.

Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail (2009)
by Paul Polak
Polak, a psychiatrist, has applied a behavioral and anthropological approach to alleviating poverty, developed by studying people in their natural surroundings. He argues that there are three mythic solutions to poverty eradication: donations, national economic growth, and big businesses. Instead, he advocates helping the poor earn money through their own efforts of developing low-cost tools that are effective and profitable.

Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (2009) – TDC’s review of this book.
by Dambisa Moyo
Moyo, a Zambia-born economist, asserts that aid is not only ineffective—it’s harmful. Her argument packs a strong punch because she was born and raised in Africa. Moyo believes aid money promotes the corruption of governments and the dependence of citizens, and advocates that an investment approach will do more to help reduce poverty than aid ever could.

Poor Economics A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (2011)
by Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo
Using the framework of randomized control trials, which allow for large-scale data collection to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention, these two development economists assess the impact of a wide range of development programs in alleviating poverty. They have found that most programs have not been designed with a rigorous understanding of the behaviors and needs of the poor or how aid effects them, they advocate that for programs to be successful they must be designed with evidence gathered from direct interaction with those who they are meant to benefit.

Development As Freedom (2000)
by Amartya Sen
A Nobel Prize winning economist, Sen examines the essential role that elementary freedoms, social and political, have in improving the prosperity of the society at large. Although his focus on human welfare as a central aspect of economic thought is not universally accepted among economists, this approach inserts elements of ethics into a field from which it is often not emphasized. Although this is a difficult read, the concepts included are important to the dialogue about the causes and remedies to the economics of poverty.

Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005)
by Jim Collins
Meant to accompany the seminal business book Good to Great that examined why companies succeed or fail and found nine key aspects, including: leadership, simplicity, discipline and innovation, this work focuses on applying these lessons to the nonprofit sector. While more focused on management of organizations than macro economic issues, this short and easy to read monograph suggests a roadmap of how those interested in addressing issues of poverty should pursue these efforts.

I have read or am extremely family with all but the last three of these books, and those three will likely be the next up on my personal reading list. 

The original post was found through Paul Polak’s (author of Out of Poverty, one of the featured books) Facebook, although in poking around on the site it may quickly become a regularly visited site for the TDC team.

Just before Christmas I had a thought-provoking discussion on the BBC World Service with Paul Niehaus, who has set up GiveDirectly, a US-based startup NGO pioneering a new financing model based on cash transfers. The idea couldn’t be simpler:

1. People donate through GD’s webpage
2. GD locates poor households in Kenya (see below)
3. GD transfers your donation electronically (through the M-Pesa mobile payments system) to a recipient’s cell phone (they send each household $500 per year for two years)
4. The recipient collects the transfer

GD reckons that in this way, it can get 90 cents in every donated donor into the hands of poor people. Step 2 is interesting: ‘We do this in three steps.  We first select regions of Kenya with high poverty rates using census data.  We then identify villages with low-quality housing and access to an agent providing mobile-phone-based payment services. Finally, we identify the poorest households in these villages using simple, transparent criteria: we target all households living in homes made out of mud, wood, and grass. These criteria effectively identify relatively poor households and are generally perceived by the community as fair. We record eligible households’ phone numbers or, for those that do not have a phone, provide them with a SIM card. We follow up initial identification with a rigorous process of audits to prevent mistakes or fraud.’

What’s innovative about this is the coming together of cash transfers (CTs) and mobile payments systems to make the CT option available to individual donors, rather than (as previously) being exclusively a government, big aid donor or large NGO activity (Oxfam does lots of them – in fact it was our cash for coffins project that partly gave Paul the idea).

There was a high level of agreement in the BBC discussion (doubtless to the horror of the producer – arguments make much better radio). This kind of approach is exciting, but only relevant to part of the aid and development story – for example in the Horn of Africa, we are doing cash transfers, but also have to work to get market traders to re-establish supply chains in the worst-hit areas or there is nothing for people to spend the transferred money on.

While they help with short term consumption and investment, cash transfers don’t directly tackle the kinds of systemic problems that underpin poverty and inequality – dealing with those requires a more complex approach based on partnering with local civil society organizations, and all that brokering and convening stuff I write about on this blog. And what about gender – who owns the phones and gets access to the $500? It would be interesting to see if there’s a difference between how men and women phone-holders spend the money – I wonder if GD have included that in their monitoring and evaluation?

Finally the approach seems inherently individualistic – there is no obvious way to fund community organizations in this model. At least not yet. I talked to our fundraisers prior to the interview and they linked this to a generational shift. Younger people are less trusting of institutions than older ones, so the pressure for this kind of person-to-person ‘disintermediation’ (sorry) is only likely to grow. People only believe their money is doing good if they can see it drop into the hand (or cellphone) of a recipient. Oxfam has already responded to this with schemes like Projects Direct, and new initiatives like Kiva and now GiveDirectly are addressing the same disquiet.

An alternative approach is to do a better job in explaining why we need to use people’s donations to tackle the underlying structural causes of poverty, through a more complex (and expensive) engagement with the state, companies, civil society organizations etc.

But another might be to put the two together. If the new generation is both more activist (Occupy, Arab Spring etc) and more sceptical of institutions, how about adapting the GiveDirectly model to ‘sponsor an activist’? Your $10 a month would go straight to the cellphone of a named HIV activist, or a land rights organizer. In return you would get regular tweets, blogs or whatever so you can follow what they’ve been getting up to. Paul says he’s going to think about the idea, but is anyone already doing it? If so, how’s it going?

You can listen to the piece here, with Paul Niehaus of GiveDirectly, Mike Jennings of SOAS and me, (although it might have got a bit truncated at either end of the 7 minute piece).

To see the original post, visit Duncan’s blog, (the TDC team does, all the time!) From Poverty to Power.

A few years ago I briefly used GoodSearch, which donates a penny to the cause of your choice (of over 100,000 supported on their site) each time you search and at no cost to you. Back then you had to go to www.goodsearch.com each time you wanted to do a search for it to count.

Now you can install a toolbar and make it your default search engine.

The site is pretty straight forward, and after you sign up you don’t really need to go back very often. It took me a few minutes to find the list of participating organizations (I don’t like calling them charities), but other than that signing up was a breeze.

The only drawback to GoodSearch that I could find was that it is a Yahoo search (which is now powered by Bing). I will admit, I’m normally a Google-girl myself, however for at least 95% of my searches I will get the information I want either way, so I am still making the change.

There is also GoodShop, which seems great- but I haven’t had occasion to do any online shopping in the past week, so I cannot vouch for it personally.

GoodDining is the newest component. When signing up I was a little concerned that I had to provide my credit/debit card information, so I read about why. Basically, you don’t have to remember to tell your waiter that you are participating, or present a coupon, card, membership number, or anything else. By signing up your card(s), GoodSearch can automatically keep track of every donation-generating transaction you make.

These types of efforts alone won’t be enough to fully fund the truly life-changing poverty alleviation efforts that work, but it is an easy way to help those organizations you love. Just this morning I have raised $.05 for the charity I selected, without any additional effort or money on my part.

Don’t worry, we’ll update you when TDC gets our 501c3 status and can receive donations through the GoodSearch network!

And that is it.

There is no education about the causes, no links to organizations actually working on solutions, no way to give money or find ways to volunteer. The campaign uses the “quantum physics” described in books like “The Secret” to justify this approach. MTV says that even in our hectic, distracted lives we can take a moment on a regular basis to “give a shit while taking a shit” to change the world.

I don’t blame the campaign for the shock-value of cussing while doing good. In fact, other organizations like Charity Swear Box utilize potty-mouthed Twitterers to encourage giving. I just thought after nearly 6 months of this campaign that either:

1. MTV would realize that it didn’t hurt to add a few cursory educational or donation-type links and give a smidge of legitimacy to this campaign, or
2. People would stop clicking and participating!

I would even take a paragraph or two on how some groups think destigmatizing talk about bathroom breaks may help with sanitation efforts.

This is a great example of “the bad.” Any time, effort, or money (I’m not worried about passion – these guys clearly don’t have any) spent on this project could have been directed towards moving families out of poverty.

I will leave you with this. Throughout the site MTV quotes the Dalai Lama, who it claims inspired the idea. Of course, I might personally go with this quote to show that he is likely not a supporter.

It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives.

Our next step is to really maintain our blog.

The bottom line is, we live in a world of scarcity. That applies to the passion, effort, and money given to causes as well. We want those resources to be given most effectively and guided by what works.

This blog will be a compilation of regular updates on new ideas in poverty alleviation, on the good, the bad, and the easy ways to give, and some of our favorite educational resources. We want to provide a resource for students looking to take action right now and to learn more about how they can effect change in the world, as well as for those who want to critically think about the giving they do.

So please, look back at some of the great posts we made in the past, and come back often as we develop our blog and resources to help students interested in poverty alleviation have a bigger, more meaningful, and more sustainable impact.

Learn More: http://monthofmicrofinance.org/about/

In response to Illich’s claim that “there is no common ground whatsoever” on which [volunteers and individuals living in poverty] can meet and interact, we defer to a TDC member who found such a statement insulting. To assume that we cannot share wisdom, humor and common ambitions with those in poverty insinuates a level of inequality that the TDC will not prescribe to.  We are bonded by more than just our class or life circumstances; and while it may come as a challenge to reflect on those commonalities, they do exist.  It is just this challenge – to find such commonalities (between ourselves and the people we’re looking to help), and to use them in our joint efforts to create a better future.  As a group of students, sheltered/shielded from the reality of even our own community – the world of those whom we are trying to help is more visceral, more real than anything most of us have ever had to experience.  Yes, this reality can and will be shocking.  But to assume that we cannot learn and profit from it as human beings and even use that knowledge and experience to help others in whatever way we can underestimates our capacity to change the world for the better.

Illich pleas for foreign aid workers to remove themselves from a culture alien to them, a situation beyond their comprehension, before they do irreparable harm.  This harm, according to him, is all the more dangerous for those of us who are unconscious of it: so wrapped up in our own comfortable worlds are we that we cannot see the potential harm of our actions.  To compound the problem, we are often working with people who cannot tell us to go away: so un-empowered that they cannot refuse well-intentioned meddling.  Our own blindness to the realities of a life of poverty from lack of personal experience and the immense power differential between even naïve volunteer students and those they attempt to “help” mean that far from making a significant difference though well-meaning gestures, these actions can do real harm.

These well-reasoned critiques of Illich have prompted much soul-searching on the part of the Two Dollar Challenge.  To justify our actions and the actions of those we support (to ourselves), we must acknowledge the Monsignor’s criticism.  To this end, we argue that economic development is not simply about changing the lives of those we’re trying to help, neither is it entirely about changing our lives; rather, it should be about building relationships through a mutual process of learning about and from one another.  There are many aid organizations that see their role as one of implementing policies in developing countries, helping to bring people out of poverty.  There are others that focus on creating awareness of poverty among privileged people: changing our lives to include a greater consciousness of a world beyond our narrow horizons.  In part, this is what TDC attempts to do with Challenge Week.  But we also see ourselves bridging the gap between these two types of organizations: creating relationships between students in developed countries and organizations working on the ground, with men and women and children facing very real poverty.  It is these relationships that we prize most.  A part of our perceived role as such a connection involves our demand for responsibility from the development community to recognize the effects of their aid on the communities they are working with, whether those effects be positive or negative.  Attempts to do good must not rely on intentions alone, but must look critically at actions and their impacts.  This critical self-reflection, prompted by recognizing the validity of opposing arguments such as Illich’s, can only make aid organizations more effective.

It is in following just such a response that the TDC intends to continuously evaluate our theory of change, setting the path that we see for the TDC and assessing the tools by which we expect to achieve our objectives.  We believe that we, as students, are poised to give the next generation of aid practitioners and responsible wealthy global citizens the tools they need to change the world’s circumstances: to critically look at the way development is being done, and by doing so, to continuously improve the process(es) of development aid.  We, and others as represented by Illich, could argue that we have at best inadequate and at worst harmful tools and abilities.  But the fact that we are wealthy students with limited life experiences does not make us any less human, just as poverty does not, and we can use our common humanity as the foundation for meaningful relationships, and ones that can go beyond good intentions and even good actions to reach beneficial outcomes (for ourselves and for those individuals with whom we build a relationship).