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).

The first issue is the motivation of the voluntourist.  Are voluntourists there to really serve the community, or to get a more “authentic” experience of a different culture and community?  Perhaps they are simply trying to feel good about themselves, content in their knowledge that they made a difference.  My guess would be that the majority has a mixture of these motivations playing into the desire to go, and it’s not possible or fair to make sweeping generalizations about the motivations of all volunteers.  When considering these service abroad opportunities, it’s crucial to examine one’s own motivations.  If you only want to go to be able to say “I made a difference,” then stay home.  Voluntouring should be more about the making a difference part, not about the “I.”  The developing world should not be considered a playground for the wealthy who want to do something.  This is one of the biggest critiques of Nicholas Kristoff’s “Do It Yourself Aid”, which holds that aid is not, and should not, be about the donor, but rather about the recipient.

            This issue of the focus of aid segues nicely into the next issue at hand: what the voluntourists do on the ground.  All too often, these individuals are unskilled at what the community needs, and so they can potentially do harm by replacing local workers.  Let’s face it, somebody who has been doing manual labor for his or her whole life is going to be better at digging ditches than you or I, and such individuals definitely don’t need us to come take their jobs in order to “help.”  Instead of crafting programs around local community needs, programs are often designed to allow the volunteer to do a short-term project, which does not do anyone much good.  In that case, the money used for these projects is put to much better use by simply being donated to relevant projects, which creates more sustainable use in the community.  For example, rather than having students with no experience in teaching ESL volunteer for a short amount of time, paying the salary of a local, trained English teacher does more sustainable good.  Very simply, programs often attempt to create short-term solutions, which are catered towards the volunteer, to these long-term problems that are the reality of the communities.  However, some volunteer abroad programs are good at using volunteers with skills that the community desires and doesn’t have, which can have more sustainable impacts.  (For a listing of some organizations that do this, see http://www.globalpovertyproject.com/blog/view/302).   It’s also crucial to monitor the impact of these interventions in order to avoid repeating the same harmful mistakes.  Perhaps the biggest flaw of voluntourism is the limited time horizon.  Volunteers are there for a short amount of time, doing projects that are likely to die with their departure.  Thus, organizations often have no incentive to ensure that their projects are doing well.

            Even in “best-case” scenarios, it’s important to conceptualize the experience as a partnership, rather than a westerner coming in as an expert to save the day.  There’s often a kind of “moral imperialism,” in which we assume that because we’re from a wealthy, educated country, we can enter a region without any knowledge about the local community or culture and just fix all the problems.  As William Easterly argues, development is a bottom-up process, in which the local communities are the ones fixing their problems, and our role is merely one of support. 

            On the flip side, however, there is much to be said for these experiences.  The enthusiasm of volunteers has a benefit all of its own.  Generally they return not only better informed, but also capable of serving as advocates for and stakeholders in the development of the community and the world.  Often, volunteers find the experience humbling, and return to their daily routines with a new awareness of their lives and how they fit into the world around them.  There are countless anecdotes of development professionals who got their starts in similar programs, and of programs that really did have significant impacts on the communities that volunteers were working with.  To sum up, I’d like to encourage potential “voluntourists” to be honest and humble about their skills and motivations and how those will impact the communities they are trying to help; to take off the rose-colored glasses, but not to replace them with blinders and ignore the potential good in volunteering abroad.  Voluntouring really can be life-changing, and, when done right, it can perhaps go beyond making the volunteer feel good. 

By Laura Dick

Further debate on Voluntourism can be found at the following:

http://goodintents.org/volunteering-overseas/whose-volunteer-experience-is-this-anyway

http://goodintents.org/staffing-or-employment/voluntourism-what-could-go-wrong

http://goodintents.org/common-aid-problems/if-this-were-you-what-skills-and-abilities-would-you-want-from-a-voluntourist

http://goodintents.org/staffing-or-employment/how-to-get-involved-in-aid

http://goodintents.org/orphanages/hug-an-orphan-vacations

http://goodintents.org/volunteering-overseas/guideline-3-for-volunteering-overseas

http://goodintents.org/volunteering-overseas/guideline-2-for-volunteering-overseas

http://goodintents.org/aid-recipient-concerns/disaster-tourism

http://goodintents.org/in-kind-donations/dos-donts-community-outreach

http://mitpsc.mit.edu/globalchallenge/?p=335

http://www.globalpovertyproject.com/blog/view/302

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6945370.stm

Have you ever slid into the midday slump with a cup of coffee in hand?  Have you wondered about where your coffee came from before the caffeine had a chance to hit your system and help you finish an assignment or clean up around the house?  Probably not, and why would you?  Who wants to daydream about the poverty that your mint mocha or extra caramel macchiato has helped to create.  The likelihood is—whether you have daydreamed about it or not—that the coffee, chocolate, jeans, and sweets you consume came from a land far removed from your mind’s eye, but out of sight does not have to be out of mind.   It’s your decision to take a stand and make a difference. 

Try this video on for size the next time you pick up The Times and your tall skinny latte.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JfGki00T0c

This video raises a few important questions.  For instance, what is it that makes us want to spend as recklessly as we do?  Why is it that the world’s richest ten percent of the population consumes fifty-nine percent of the world’s goods and services?  More importantly, what can citizens do to level the playing field if the World Trade Organization cannot enforce its sanctions and the International Monetary Fund continues to loan money in ways that make it difficult to promote growth?  The video suggests that you buy fair trade products and alter your mindset, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.  

Many think that the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund are the primary paths to reducing poverty in developing nations.  Others are aware that the United States donates a sizable amount to foreign aid.  After all, we were first on the scene in Haiti, weren’t we?  (It was China actually.)  And hey, we contribute more in foreign aid dollars than any other nation.  True, but it’s not much of a contribution when you weigh it in terms of what the United States has to offer.  In fact, the United States donated one of the smallest portions of its gross net income (GNI) to foreign aid of any developed nation in 2010 and has fallen short of the 0.7 percent of its GNI promise since the U.S. signed the United Nations General Assembly Resolution in 1970.

It’s easy to think that our tax dollars have contributed to some kind of international charity and are making a difference, but the truth is that even if the United States donated its full 0.7 percent, top-down foreign aid makes it likely that the money rarely reaches those who need it.  The elegance of this film comes from its simplicity.  It reminds us that the US government will not be the vessel for change.  It is our duty to change our mindset by asking questions about labor conditions for the goods we buy; supporting free trade; and writing our congressional representatives and demanding that the United States engage in a stronger effort to make its aid more efficient.  It’s our duty to inform our friends, our family, and ourselves and it’s our duty to make the right decisions.  Finally, it’s our duty to know and debate the issues around foreign aid and economic development.  It’s only through asking questions and waking up that we can finally make a difference.  

You can start your mission by visiting one of these two sites to find shops that offer fair trade products in your area.  

 http://www.wfto.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=164&Itemid=1

 http://www.transfairusa.org/content/WhereToBuy/

Works cited

http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance#Aidmoneyisactuallywaybelowwhathasbeenpromised

by Jane Wallingford  (University of Mary Washington)

Nearly half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day.  For one week, we are asking you to join them.  During the month of April, students across the country can among other things live on $2 a day to help raise funds and awareness for their domestic or global microfinance organization of choice.  As you know, microfinance enables individuals to break the cycle of poverty by providing them the opportunity they need.  The TDC Team invites you to participate in a “Month of Microfinance” this April.  Join the growing student microfinance movement in the raising of funds and awareness for microfinance.

WHAT: “Month of Microfinance”

WHY: Raise awareness and funds for your microfinance organization of choice

WHEN: April 1 – April 30, 2012

WHERE: College, university and high school campuses across the country.