Joseph Kony & Invisible Children: What is Responsible Advocacy?

I just shared a post on the topic above at the site that goes along with the book I'm co-authoring, Building a Better World: The Pedagogy and Practice of Global Service-Learning. Please take a look there if the topic interests you.

8 Resources for Good Living and Giving in 2012

New Year's Resolutions for conscious consumption, giving, generosity, focusing on what matters? If so, check out this quick list on a new site I'm developing - Building a Better World: The Pedagogy and Practice of Global Service-Learning. It's a site to go along with a book I'm completing with Richard Kiely, Christopher Boettcher, and Jessica Friedrichs - all good old friends.


We'd love your feedback on the site and whether you find the links useful before we go 'totally live' with it. This new site will let me blog on all things global service-learning over there - and go off about good clean livin', politics, travel, and pick-up trucks full of social justice, here.

Please take a look at the 8 Resources for Good Living and Giving in 2012 and - via comments there, personal email, or comments here, let me know how you like the site.

Posting as a Guest Today on "Good Intentions are Not Enough" - Take a Look!

Please join the conversation at the Good Intentions blog! Many thanks to Saundra for the guest post opportunity!

NY Times "Volunteer Tourism ... on a Budget" Misses the Point

Last week the NY Times ran Budget Excursions for Volunteers in their Travel Section. The article, from the title and throughout the text, takes the wrong angle. If you're interested in "doing good" while on vacation, there are a set of crucial questions to ask long before considering cost. These questions include:

1. Can the organization demonstrate long-term relationships in the community?
2. Can the organization demonstrate clear and systematic processes for (a) getting and (b) listening to community direction on several important questions, from selection of the volunteer project to and through project evaluation? 
3. Is the organization clearly cognizant of international development history and aware of potential macro-effects of volunteer groups (for example, the possibility of displacing local workers)? How does the organization address these challenges?  
4. Can the organization articulate its theories of development and community partnership? 
5. Is the organization a transparent and accountable nonprofit organization or does it use another organizational model (business or less-than-transparent nonprofit are two common structures that offer less clarity for volunteers curious about where the funds go). 

There are other important questions to ask - many of which will be mentioned in the blog post I'll have on Monday on the Good Intentions are Not Enough blog. I hope you'll share your thoughts about the issues raised here and the post there once that goes up on Monday. 

My apologies for the lull in posts: travelling around the world, moving across the country, starting a new job, and addressing a whole set of family changes and challenges keeps a person busy! Thanks for the notes in the interim. If you like the content and conversation here, please follow the conversation by inserting your email on the right --- or re-post or tweet! Thanks for reading!  

Kindness in Kayanga

“Mr. Erici? Are you here, Mr. Erici?” – the Swahili-speaking custodian, grounds manager, watchman, and chicken-slaughterer called through our room door, adding the final “i” that is customary for adopted English words. “Yes, James, I’m here,” I said as I opened the door. He had brought a gift – one pineapple and one papaya – presumably because I gave him a small amount of antibiotic ointment (antibiotic-i) a few days ago when he nearly sliced his finger off. I’m sure the cut deserved stitches. I’m sure James is as deserving of basic health care as I am, but instead he’s left showing his thanks with gifts from his garden for a small amount of antibiotic ointment. The people of Kayanga (town), Karagwe (district), Kagera (region) are continuously kind and welcoming.

Earlier today I went with a small group of students to learn more about a regional outreach effort to support people with disabilities. In short, the challenges are these: people with disabilities have long been marginalized as presumed burdens; children with disabilities do not typically attend any school, because those with physical disabilities cannot manage to walk to school and those with mental disabilities have no support services; there is a severe problem with rape of women who have disabilities, along with ensuing pregnancies for women who may not be able to care for the children.

Into this sea of challenges steps a network of dynamic community-based organizations that are making real, if painfully slow, progress on each of these issues. Today we accompanied the Anglican-supported Karagwe Program for People with Disabilities on a village outreach visit. As a special treat, our group included Matthew Mcllvenna, Field Representative for Friends of the Children of Tanzania. Matt is currently on sabbatical from the UN and has been focusing on developing and supporting the networks that work with people with disabilities in this region.  

We drove out of Kayanga, past Omurushaka, onto the dirt roads, off of the energy grid, down continuously narrower dirt roads, until finally we reached the small village Catholic Church that was the center of outreach for the day. Word had spread, and more than thirty people with disabilities had found their way (walking, limping, otherwise moving over miles) to the site. The day began with a prayer – inviting Muslims and Christians to pray as they wished for one another. Immediately after that ecumenical beginning our female facilitator, Upendo, asked the group what they had learned during a previous visit.

Their answers were quick and compelling, “people with disabilities are fully human; people with disabilities deserve equal treatment; people may be born with or may develop disabilities; disability may result from old age…” The answers continued for several minutes. After this educational outreach, the triaging began. The visit focused not on care but on connecting people with the appropriate services. Several people were recommended for treatment by Dr. Angelo, the orthopedic doctor and physio-therapist at the hospital in Bukoba.

Each individual patient’s story was extraordinarily compelling, and their challenges include not only their physical ailments but also the need to pay for transportation to the hospital and to afford food during their stay. I’ll share specific stories as students summarize them in their journals.

And now  a few photos courtesy of Shannon Wheatley Hartman. They are as follows: a Kayanga Village Street (near where we're staying), local entrepreneur and friend Peter Lazaro explaining his screen printing business to us, and WOMEDA Director Juma Massisi sharing information about Women's Rights in the region. 

Returning to old friends; witnessing change; comfort in Kayanga

As the Arizona State-Amizade Community Development course begins, the red-dirt streets of Kayanga are familiar. I’ve spent more summertime here over the past five years than any other place except Pittsburgh. It’s been a joy to return and reconnect. Peter Lazaro has a wife and baby. Juma Massisi is doing very well. Joseph Sekiku’s son Simeon has grown into a young man and his young daughter Anna is now away at boarding school in Uganda. The originally-imagined Amizade-ELCT orphanage project has morphed into a much-needed nurses training center (as reviews of orphanages have steadily grown more critical). This year’s students are rapidly meeting and connecting with Amizade’s network of friends in the area. We’ve noticed that more people seem to know how to say uh-ma-za-gee correctly in Kayanga than in most cities in the United States. 

Amizade’s presence and partnership here has contributed to the development of at least one small business, one nonprofit organization, seven family water harvesting systems and tanks (supporting some 40 people), one USAID grant supporting WOMEDA and renewable through later years, further dialogue and awareness about women’s rights, English tutoring in schools, the expansion of FADECO radio, the creation of a tree and plant nursery at Mavuno, the completion of a village-scale water harvesting system in Chonyonyo, the completion of one-going-on-two water tanks at Mavuno for a girls boarding school that is currently under construction, and the development of water access and wind-generated electricity at the Eden Center, where computer training classes for women currently take place. We are here now with fourteen students; yesterday was the first day of service.

One group is supporting WOMEDA’s most recent data-gathering project, working to provide data for a future grant application that will help address teen pregnancy. Another group is supporting English language learning in the schools, and the third group is advancing the construction of a water harvesting tank that will support the Mavuno girls’ boarding school. The groups will spend several days on each project, cycling through with steady leadership at each location. Along the way, the students are wrestling with development issues, learning a great deal about the reality of regular electricity service, steady and sometimes hot water, travel, and dust. They’re experiencing international borders in East Africa and getting a glimpse of what education systems often look like in rural communities. Most of all, they’re eating an awful lot of matoke (mashed banana).

I find myself at comfort here; the systems of support for the program continue to improve and I’m increasingly familiar with each bend in the road and trail through the banana trees that cover the valley. My main concern as always is how we could do more as an organization and group of service-learners. Organizations like Amizade serve many missions, providing students with educationally challenging and personally rewarding study abroad programs that encourage global ethics while also taking seriously the substantial challenges involved in community-driven development across cultures. I think Amizade does a good job of balancing the pressures at play here: neither focusing too much on students at the expense of community concerns nor jeopardizing students’ experiences, learning, and safety in order to give more attention and resources to the community. How this is achieved will be the subject of future posts. For now: we are all healthy, happy, and pleased to be serving and learning in Kayanga.          

The Itinerary: Study Abroad in Rural Tanzania

I’m preparing to leave once again on a journey that will cross one ocean and a few continents. This time I'm  co-leading an Arizona State University Global Studies service-learning course in rural Tanzania (in cooperation with Amizade Global Service-Learning). While all the business schools and policy wonks are singing the praises of globalization, many Americans still can’t find Iraq and Afghanistan on a map, so let me take a moment to describe Tanzania’s location. It’s pretty much smack in the North-South center of the East African coast. Its coast and outlying islands of Zanzibar and Pemba have long hosted a trade in spices between the Middle East, parts of Asia, and the eastern part of continental Africa.

It’s the birthplace of humankind, home to the famous Serengeti and its Big Five safari animals, and it was a center of hope in post-colonial African nationalism and socialist experimentation. Rock-n-Roll lovers might know Freddie Mercury was born in a Zoroastrian Community on Zanzibar. It’s topography shifts from pale brown, low-lying mountains in the West to the massive, stretching, dusty vegetated plain that is the Serengeti, and along to humidity on the continental coast edged by what is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and unique islands in the world (Zanzibar).

On our journey, we’ll first fly into Entebbe Airport near Kampala, Uganda. That’s no small thing. The students begin in Phoenix, fly all day to New York, get on a night flight to Brussels, arrive in Europe in the morning, and then fly all day to central Africa – Uganda. We’ll step off the plane together into thick, muggy air – Uganda is lush and green with vegetation. At the airport we’ll meet one of Amizade’s local coordinators, who will be with us throughout the program. That night we’ll stay at a hotel in Kampala. Our bodies will be ready for some real rest after effectively two full days of travel, but the students will be learning how to adjust bed nets over their beds, marveling at Kampala’s traffic patterns, and taking in Africa on the ground for the first time. Rest will nonetheless come quickly.

In the morning we’ll pile into vans, secure our luggage on top, and begin the long journey over road south toward the border with Tanzania. We’ll scoot past fields and fields of banana trees, people moving produce on bicycles, markets, and locals hawking food and water to every passing bus and car. On the trip we’ll cross the equator and we’ll cross the border into Tanzania, getting our visas there.

A few hours south into Tanzania, as the road gets closer to Bukoba, the prominent city on the West Coast of lake Victoria, we’ll veer right and head West toward Rwanda. The road will turn to dirt, we’ll pop over a few bumps and ruts, climb several hills, and eventually after one particularly long climb upward, find ourselves in the community that is Kayanga Village. There we’ll stay for three weeks, learning about development issues, developing the most basic of Swahili skills (one of Tanzania’s official languages), tutoring in English (the other national language), assisting with some water harvesting efforts, and supporting the development of a survey relating to computers in schools.  Each of these various service initiatives comes at the direction of community partners there, something I’ll talk about much more in the coming month.

Following our three weeks in Kayanga, we’ll head East to Bukoba, catch the ferry overnight to Mwanza, and go on a safari from Mwanza, across the Serengeti to Arusha. We’ll have one night in Arusha before flying out to Zanzibar, where we’ll be able to think through some of the lessons learned in the previous weeks, go on a spice tour, check out the amazing small city of Stonetown, and relax and swim.    

If you're interested in keeping up with this journey, its relationship to development issues, or the inevitable reviewing and sharing of related books, just enter your email in the box on the right or follow me on twitter. As always, I'm eager to hear your comments and questions. 

NOW "Three Cups of Tea" is a Useful University Teaching Tool

Greg Mortensons’ Three Cups of Tea has become the essential teaching tool universities always wanted it to be. The narrative of hope and attendant fall from grace forces consideration of the important challenges of representation, service, development, storytelling, and advancing human rights. Unfortunately, many voices inside the academy seem as eager to nurture an archetype of Mortenson as thoughtless villain as others were once willing to paint him in bold strokes of perfect humanitarian. The truths are certainly interwoven and overlapping in between. It is our job as university educators to not only see this nuance, but to build our students’ abilities to do so as well. Professors who understand and approach the Three Cups debacle as a teachable moment are dabbling in the real and profoundly challenging work of community-engaged teaching and learning, even if their particular courses do not leave campus. 

There are several debates within and surrounding service-learning in higher education that are highly relevant to the Mortenson scandal. First, there is the assertion that community-engagement has no proper place in higher education (as in Fish's Save the World on Your Own Time, see reply by Dan Butin); that either the promotion of values is inappropriate or that community-engaged work is necessarily less rigorous. Second, there is the ongoing concern with naïve development amateurs – often our students and even professors – who, Mortenson-like, bumble into communities with high ideals and little else.

What professors using Three Cups of Tea as a common text had was a compelling contemporary narrative that stirred our emotions through use of a time-tested American Hero trope in the vein of Wyatt Earp, Luke Skywalker, and even now Jason Bourne: a regular, unsuspecting humble guy is moved suddenly to action through forces beyond his control. Composition and writing professors had (and now have even more so) an opportunity to examine Three Cups for the common tricks of the trade it employs, from hinging on this easy narrative to dichotomizing good and evil and, as Krakauer has made clear, compressing time, dramatizing events, and simplifying cultures.

Of course, we do not use every compelling contemporary narrative as a common text at our universities. What captured the public and academic imagination about this text was that it offered a simple solution to the often intractable challenge of development; it advanced education for all and thereby played upon a common value for most Americans; and it offered Love in a region where many Americans could only see potential for warfare. 

Now that the exposé has hit the presses, we are all – lay and academic alike – retreating to our comfortable spaces. We’re seeing a backlash from development bloggers and academics who study development. They’re critical of Mortenson's seeming naivety and they’re likewise concerned about Nick Kristof’s celebration of the “DIY Revolution” in aid and development.

The academic response of dialogue via critical questioning and concern is underway on the primary Higher Education Service-Learning listserve. In a letter to her colleagues that was forwarded (with permission) to the list, Bucknell University anthropologist Clare Sammells provided a quick and thorough review of some of the concerns surrounding Mortenson's portrayal of Pakistani, Muslim, and Balti people (and this kind of thorough analysis would be a great use of the Mortenson text in an anthropology course). However, Sammell's larger, concluding claim gave me pause. I suspect her words ring true for many within higher education,

“By taking on this book [Three Cups of Tea] as a campus-wide reading, are we committing ourselves to teaching first-year students the history and politics of this region that Mortenson elides?  Are we willing to approach this book as a compelling – but quite probably misleading – narrative about a politically important region?  Or are we going to leave our students with the impression that this is an accurate portrayal of Northern Pakistan and the “Muslim World” that Mortenson conflates it with?

I feel we should present our incoming students with a common text that we feel represents good research, subtle analysis of the complexities of the world, and real insight into cultural difference without relying on oversimplifications. This is our students’ introduction to the “life of the mind;” we should endeavor to make it a positive example of how to approach understanding the world.”

There are different kinds of texts, different kinds of research, and many different types of vast oversimplifications of the world. There are better forms and worse forms, but there are no perfect forms or methods for representing people, cultures, and their places within geopolitics. Mortenson provided (and, I think, may still provide) a compelling narrative that many students could identify with, that includes an accessible pathway into serious discussion about how methodology, disciplinary lenses, and experience informs interpretations. Anthropologists, political scientists, and economists with more than a decade of training on specific methodologies would view the region differently from an emergency room nurse and serious mountain climber (the latter being Mortenson). The political scientist would likely view the region too much in terms of power; the economist likely too much in terms of constrained decision-making relating to finite resources, but each method would offer its insights and be vulnerable to important critiques.

We have the opportunity to sharpen our students’ analysis skills by looking at the types of books they’re most likely to read after they graduate (creative nonfiction having a much stronger claim on the adult reader market than peer-reviewed journal articles), even while acknowledging that those books (and indeed all books) are imperfect. By examining popular texts we are explicitly developing the skills students will need to be informed and deliberate consumers of popular culture in its many forms. We are developing skills required for good citizenship.  

Within this broad understanding of the many potential sources of knowledge and the challenging social and environmental issues we face, what the service-learning community uniquely admits, I think, is that it is always easier to shame imperfect attempts at advancing justice than it is to make a difference. And the community’s bias, while steeped in critical accounts and questioning, is that it is still important to attempt to (hopefully with humility, insight, and real direction from community partners) build a better world.  

At this point it’s unclear whether the charges leveled against Mortenson will prove to be definitively damming for the work of the CAI, but in any case it’s worth reviewing how before or after this specific scandal thoughtful professors have the opportunity to use this and other popular “development solution” narratives to engage in the critical analysis that we are charged with developing in our students. At a minimum, anyone reading the book with students should ask: “What is development?” “What are human rights?” and “How do we know?”

Development is notoriously hard to define. However defined, it sometimes works and sometimes fails fantastically. To analyze the most popular academic writers and books on development (e.g. Sachs’ End of Poverty, Easterly’s White Man’s Burden, Collier’s Bottom Billion, or Moyo’s Dead Aid) one needs not

        

only the ability to analyze the presentation of data and the implicit arguments about human nature, but also the insight to recognize the danger of sweeping narratives. Such works are by necessity ideological commitments that draw on particular facts within the broad sweep of recent history, ultimately combined and presented as comprehensive understanding.

Careful readers will have noticed that I failed to mention the evermore popular Esther Duflo. Indeed, her work cannot be characterized in the same way so easily – and her carefully developed empirical analyses have supported some debunking of the relatively recent “microfinance as panacea” mythology that, pre-Mortenson, permeated American hopes for the developing world. As a recent reviewer suggests, however, the danger in Duflo may be that in putting so much emphasis on carefully constrained social experiments to fight poverty she ignores the real forces of power and oppression that must be addressed. These writers all have strengths and weaknesses in their analysis and due to the limitations of their particular lenses, just as is the case with Mortenson. As an educator, I find it helpful to use popular texts and narratives as entry points into considering how academic writers’ insights help us better understand our limitations and potential.

As professors and students consider the question of human rights they have the opportunity to engage in many other important discussions through review of that many more essential authors. Does education ‘count’ as a human right? Does everyone deserve access to it? How should one respond to concerns that it may interfere with the group rights also recognized by the United Nations? These questions are extremely important for analysis in philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political science, and of course many interdisciplinary areas. They lead to consideration of writers such as Jack Donnelly, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Ignatieff, Arturo Escobar, Gustavo Esteva, and Madhu Suri Prakash. The children and families Mortenson portrays help illuminate the importance and relevance of the human rights construct and attendant debates. 

      

I have already alluded to applications of this story in composition classes, suggested a set of relevant economic development readings, and shared several prominent human rights writers. In each case, I have only scraped the surface of the particular topic area. That admission calls attention to strengths and weaknesses in community engagement: it is inherently interdisciplinary, it examines issues in their full complexity, and it does not permit tidy and decisive conclusions. Professors currently using the Mortenson text should not be “promoting” the text as much as using it as a place from which to permit students to consider how their own values and analytical abilities relate to the Mortenson story.

The process of bringing students through many important relevant texts, asking challenging questions, and leaving students to make choices about important debates that are of course still unresolved by leading human rights scholars (e.g. the debates surrounding education and group rights) is the process of liberal education. Students must ultimately choose. What community engagement does is demonstrate clear relevance and contemporary application. And this set of challenges: making real decisions about contemporary issues in light of compelling moral arguments and current practices, is why community-engaged thinking is ultimately more challenging than traditionally isolated analysis where thinkers may select assumptions and dictate parameters. 

Everyone must make choices. When we as academics choose to emphasize weaknesses in community engagement by pointing to the imperfections that accompany all human efforts, we risk paralysis by analysis for many important initiatives that do more good than harm. Despite the clear missteps Mortenson made, I strongly suspect he has done more good than harm. That suspicion is no doubt based on a culturally contingent bias toward individual human rights that suggests the importance of education and gender equity for all people, in all places. That tentative suspicion of mine may reasonably be construed as imperialistic, naïve, and harmful, but it is nonetheless where I sit after rather thorough review of development history and related texts.

Mortenson’s story points toward many more teaching opportunities that once again indicate how complex these kinds of efforts are and point to one of my original assertions - that this scandal calls attention to the ongoing important concern with naïve development amateurs -  

• The Aga Khan Development Foundation has a strong record of and infrastructure for building and staffing schools in the region. As Duflo’s analyses (and development experience for those who have it) make clear, building schools is never enough. Why did Mortenson act alone, why did CAI pay so little attention to school operations, and when (if ever) is it appropriate for similar “social entrepreneurs” to so completely, perhaps naively, follow their instincts? 
• Clear standards for nonprofit accounting and board oversight exist. Just as business schools frequently use case studies to learn from failures and successes, university community engagement efforts, public administration, and nonprofit management courses should consider this case and other failures
• How much naivety is too much? Any person working in any field today can reasonably state that they began in a relatively more naive position. Policymakers and corporate managers regularly engage in cost-benefit analysis to determine whether to keep or cut programs and products. CAI got a lot wrong, but built many schools and educated many children in the process. Some of their missteps seem to be due to insufficient understanding of the extent of tribal differences in the area. That is, while many communities wanted schools, at least a few had no interest. Still, for the children who gained access to schooling and education, is CAI providing these opportunities at a more affordable rate than large aid organizations?  If so, is their bungling in some communities enough to undermine their total efforts?

These three questions – Why not partner with established efforts? How well-versed in best practices must one be to begin human rights and social change work? And to what extent do missteps by naïve actors undermine their broader efforts? – are the questions that plague young DIY development workers and many service-learning programs. It is absolutely clear that past development efforts have frequently been harmful because of insufficient consideration of these and other foundational rights questions considered earlier. And it’s also clear that many social change movement supporters and leaders were young and naïve when they began their efforts due primarily to viscerally felt outrage at the horrible treatments visited upon “others” in the name of tradition. Universities have an opportunity to recognize these important questions early and expose students to relevant debates often, so that we do as much as we can to sharpen students’ skills as readers, potential development actors, and engaged citizens.

It would be simpler to maintain the traditional university, to forgo promotion of community engagement or consideration of contemporary, relevant books on pressing topics that do not follow academic norms for research, review, and presentation. But we must remember that to do so is to promote the status quo rather than to unsettle students’ expectations and assumptions by engaging them with real and relevant issues. While we must not fall back into the once clear arrogance and paternalism of the university as the center of solutions for others elsewhere, we must also do all that we can within this challenging and difficult world of multiple, legitimate claims to truth, to prepare our students to be builders of a world that continues to improve access to options and basic human rights for all. There it is, of course: that’s my bias again. But to educate with attention to the continent nature of human rights is not to preach so much as to prepare students for critical analysis and awareness of the importance of judgment and questioning in the world as we continue to build it. Mortenson’s story is ultimately part cautionary tale, part narrative of possibility.

As always, I love to hear your comments, questions, concerns, or criticisms. Please, if you agree, re-post, tweet, or sign up to receive posts as emails using the box on the right. 

What Three Cups of Tea Teaches Us #1: Nonprofit Education Efforts Matter

Less interesting than Greg Mortenson's various alleged missteps** is how his story illustrates our (US Public) general misunderstanding of nonprofit organizations, social change, and development. 

This is the first of what will be many blog entries dedicated to this issue. Today, the role of education in nonprofit programming. In the days to come: 

• naive development amateurs, 
• the alleged inappropriateness of Three Cups of Tea for university audiences following the scandal,  
• and the challenge and uncertainties of 'development.'

By now the story has been told and re-told: Climber, author, and philanthropist Greg Mortenson is accused of exaggeration and outright fabrication in respect to his inspiring narrative of friendship, education, and hope for children in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan (On the story: 60 Minutes, NPR, Nick Kristof, The NYT - and Mortenson's response in Outside Magazine). The story itself is important, but what's more vital is what the scandal says about our understanding of development work, nonprofit organizations, and other places and peoples. Mortenson's story demonstrates our simultaneous over-reaching optimism and unfounded expectations for development and social change.

What I find most disturbing about the Three Cups of Deceit narrative is its potential to create the inaccurate impression that development is 'not working.' On the contrary, the world is making progress toward reaching the UN Millennium Development goals and I see change agents among the Millenials, Generation X, and Generation Y marching toward unprecedented appreciation for common human dignity and interconnectedness around the world. To establish a world that better recognizes broad opportunity for human flourishing, however, we must better understand some basic development and nonprofit sector realities brought forward by this most recent controversy. First, there is the importance of education for nonprofit efforts. 

If, as the parable goes, nonprofits are going to rescue drowning children they should at least work to identify the source of the babies in the river. Nonprofits must clarify the structural issues that communities face or at least (as is more the case with Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute (CAI)), help people with access to resources (e.g. US Citizens) see that other humans elsewhere may have access to a greater set of options (education, choices) with a relatively small infusion of resources. To do that nonprofits must educate. 

The problem with education, of course, is that it costs. Mortenson's CAI made many mistakes relating to the real need for education. Most importantly, it did not explicitly communicate that donations would be used to support US-based education and outreach. This could be due to malfeasance, to lax interpretation of nonprofit accounting best practices, or due to an under-developed understanding of how the organization needed to change its funding structure as it quickly grew in size (See related resource on nonprofit capitalization). 

As CAI clearly expresses on its website, its primary purpose is to "promote and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan." This would not happen in a broad and sustainable way (at least in the current environment) without an increasingly broad and growing population of developed country citizens and foundations interested in donating to support this cause. Put another way: no book tour, no movement, no schools. 

CAI is actually not being as blunt as me. They're not attempting to defend their education efforts on the grounds that they're an important part of programming. Instead, they're suggesting they can demonstrate that particular restricted funds never supported the book tour. If they can do that, great - then they can continue to compete inside a narrative space that demands nonprofit organizations raise incredible sums, spend little to nothing on their staff members, do not expand education and outreach programs, and figuratively move mountains while otherwise holding up the world. 

We don't expect businesses to introduce a new idea (product) without spending extraordinary amounts to get their vision (buy me / sign-up) across. How can we reasonably expect someone who seemingly cares deeply about children in the remotest parts of countries that most Americans cannot identify on a map to not spend considerable resources educating Americans on (1) the fact that these children really are wonderful, innocent, beautiful children (like all children), (2) these children will not necessarily become terrorists (as many competing narratives might suggest), and (3) that these children are located in a particular place, and we have reason to think that many of them and their communities are interested in better school and education access?      

The CAI absolutely, positively should have been more explicit about how monies were being spent. They should have been clearer about the domestic education component of their mission. And they clearly should have done a better job of clarifying the lines between and among the book, its costs, and its revenues (including speaking fees). Those mis-steps suggest sloppy management and accounting, even inexcusable ignorance, but the public response focuses just as much on the fact that they were involved with education in the US at all. As Krakauer's critiques are recounted in a USA Today article: 

On its website, the CAI says it spends at least 85% of contributions on programs and only 15% on administrative and fundraising costs. This ratio is one reason Charity Navigator gave the charity four stars.

But in an online exposé of the charity published by Byliner.com, writer Jon Krakauer noted that the CAI categorizes the money it spends promoting Mortenson’s books and his travel costs as program expenses. If those costs were categorized as fundraising and administration expenses, he says, they would exceed 50% of the charity’s annual budget.

For development organizations that are broadening a public's understanding of an issue, education is absolutely part of programming. Without education, we have no consciousness-raising. Without consciousness-raising, we have no movements. 

Let me be clear: I do not support CAI's alleged playing fast and loose with accounting. I do not support fabrication of facts. If, however CAI were to act very responsibly, I suspect they would report a significant portion of book tour costs as fundraising but another significant portion of those costs would absolutely be categorized as programming. That education is necessary to meet the mission of the organization.

Until broader percentages of the public understand the importance of education in nonprofit work, arm-chair critics will be able to undermine many important efforts with ease.

Even Krakauer is allowing that Mortenson and CAI built scores of schools and educated thousands of children in this remote region of the world. This is an astonishing feat. Because this feat has been accomplished by a nonprofit organization, we expect the work to be completed more cost-effectively and creatively than government might do it, and with far less invested in outreach and marketing than would be the case if the private sector were developing a new initiative. It could still be the case that Mortenson has done several inexcusable things**, but one set of allegations is based at least in part on the unrealistic expectations we foist upon nonprofit organizations to outperform governments in terms of costs and corporations in terms of permissible behaviors, including the simple act of selling ideas (education).

If you think I've said something ridiculous, I invite your comments. If you think I've said something interesting, I also invite your comments and urge you to repost the blog link please. I will stick with this issue for the next several posts and look forward to the conversation.

Additional interesting resources:

• Humanosphere's ongoing coverage and collection of resources on the topic. 
• Good Intentions Are Not Enough's blog collection of emerging articles. 
• Author and Journalist Daniel Glick offers a unique perspective. 
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy features lessons for charities and their trustees. 

**There are many different parts to the current set of accusations. As I make clear above, I think the allegations relating to the speaker circuit and book tour are over-stated. If, however, it does turn out that Mortenson absolutely lied in reference to his alleged hostage experience (something that many members of the 'gotcha chattering class' are now focusing on with growing fervor), then he has clearly acted irresponsibly and has clearly done so consciously.  Compressions of time, on the other hand, are common in creative nonfiction narrative, making some of the allegations about the narrative arc of the story less damning than a clear finding of fabrication.

News: Be Optimistic = Live Long, Justice via Consumption?, The Education "Debate," Higher Education Relevance?

Particularly interesting articles today:

• Want to Live to 100? Try to Bounce Back from Stress on NPR adds credence to my long-standing theory that vigorous living, engaged living, and maybe even sometimes excessive living might just in its own ways also contribute to a good life lived long. OK, that's not really the article. But it does help explain why my Great Aunt Helen lived to 100 and also managed a whiskey or two every single night.  
• No Need to Volunteer or Engage - Just Buy is a book review in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The book takes up the important question of the limits of the "conscious consumption will change the world" - story. I haven't yet read the book.  
• Speaking of higher education and markets, the creator of the cartoon Dilbert has an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal today suggesting that instead of the conventional university model most students should be taught how to run a business. It is one of the most popular articles on the WSJ's most-emailed list right now, second only to "Obama Puts Taxes on Table," which of course is always going to be a #1 question among WSJ readers. I find it important because it calls attention to one of the many ways in which much of the general public seems to be currently dissatisfied with higher education. 
• And this brief editorial in the (sadly, no longer completely free) New York Times calls attention to something else I plan to write on soon: The Deadlocked Debate over Education Reform.  
• Finally, the 4th Annual Amizade Water Walks for Women's Rights in Pittsburgh and Morgantown were great successes this weekend, and got some excellent coverage in local press: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette front page and Faithburgh blog, The Daily Athenaeum (WVU), and the main Morgantown TV Station.  

From the WSJ article / Dilbert-creator column: 

#4: Why I Hate John Mayer's Social Justice Attempt

Apparently some people find Mayer’s song inspiring, and it has even made it on to some otherwise great political / social justice song sites. But “Waiting, waiting on the world to change,” as the song goes is about as anathema to good work, democracy, progress, rights, hope, and the improvement of the human condition as one can get. This blog title – Journey toward Justice – is no joke. It’s a journey: improving rights and lengthening life expectancies is the product of human cooperation, collaboration, and effort (not waiting, fool). 

That effort takes many forms, and musicians have a role. Mayer could take cues from Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, the bizillion artists who have given voice to We Shall Overcome, or currently from Angelique Kidjo and Wil.i.am (immediately below), as well as from scores and legions of others. But instead Mayer is waiting – and beyond that he’s whining: “We see everything that's going wrong / with the world and those who lead it / We just feel like we don't have the means / To rise above and beat it.”

What? You can’t make a difference? You’re famous, fool. You can move mountains. My friends can manage to make the world change for whole villages. And we’re just average Joes. It’s true that sometimes celebrities’ attempts at good works are un- or under-informed -- but study-up. Often enough celebrities behave as serious and smart people with clear commitment to specific issues that they learn a great deal about. Excellent examples include George Clooney, Bono, Mariska Hargitay, and Matt Damon, who has been a driving force on water issues through the nonprofit organization Water.org.      

Interestingly, in Mayer’s video the waiting involves spray-painting as consciousness-raising (and at the end, just to be sure you know neither Mayer nor his boys are radicals, there’s a message indicating that all spray painting was completed on private property with permission). Now I’m waiting for Mayer to do something interesting. Here’s the thing: I deeply respect, value, and appreciate the role of musicians and other artists in consciousness-raising. Mayer sings (and then even paints!) so close to this idea, but the message we get is just wait. Just wait is blasphemy to the good citizens of the world who fancy themselves as working in the tradition of fundamental human freedoms, democracy, and universal rights.

At least other artists dreaming after an as-yet-unimagined tomorrow paint us some kind of picture, like Cat Stevens’ (now Yusuf) Peace Train (which he did a sweet rendition of for Muhammed Yunis’ Nobel Peace Prize Award) and Billy Bragg’s Waiting for a New World Order. (By the way all of you out there who think “social justice” or “activist musician” is precisely equal to “totalitarian commie,” listen to the equal abuse Bragg hands out to the far ends of the political spectrum).

Of course it’s not surprising that Mayer’s song suggests what it does. We seem to have been struck (in the United States and many other places around the world) with an irrational and unfounded assumption that somehow the miracles we see all around us (basic human security, individual rights and respect for diversity across cultures and genders, 300 million people getting along pretty well across a whole continent, water when you turn on the faucet, public education) are not the product of cooperation, collaboration, and individual sacrifice for purposes that are bigger than ourselves: purposes like improving the human condition.

To bring this closer to home(s), Pennsylvania and Arizona are advancing massive cuts in education budgets. I know there are strong contingents emerging and organizing in Pennsylvania to put pressure on the state government to continue its investment in our shared futures by better funding education. Some students, for example, recently put together this video:

That’s what strong democratic (small d) states do: invest in their citizens’ human capital and tax them at reasonable rates later to continue to pay for the ongoing investment in the future. In Arizona I have students telling me that they’re going to have to pay more for college  and that their four-years of funding doesn’t match the five-years of schooling they’ll need with the planned schedule cuts and lack of class availability, but there’s no strong organizing. Perhaps they’re waiting, waiting for the market to take over their lives more completely.

Wherever you are, speak up for education. It’s something many generations of Americans have taken for granted. And it only exists if Americans work together to make it happen.

Beyond the explicit political sphere is the strong nonprofit and volunteerism sector – and the place I was really referencing above when I asserted what my friends could do. This is why the water walk is so phenomenally important. We’re not waiting for the world to change. We’re making it happen, in clear and considered cooperation with community organizations half-way around the world. These small efforts: organizing, cooperating across cultures, people donating, people walking – extend lives and give women and children a chance to get an education or work rather than constantly returning to the daily drudgery of gathering water.

Register and walk this weekend. If you can’t, donate. Don’t wait. Change the world for families in rural Tanzania, right now.    

Really. Donate. Just $25. It’s a world-changer.  

OK, thank you for reading. Now I must admit: I’m flummoxed, flabbergasted, confused and maybe just a little bit maligned – I keep hearing from people via individual emails, etc., about the blog but I have no comments and few followers and I would absolutely love more of either. I’d love to hear your song suggestions that have yet to make the list. (Tomorrow we will have the Best Social Justice Song Ever, in celebration of Amizade’s Water Walk, but in the days that follow I’ll continue to post enough to follow the due course of this fun little exercise in social justice song). I also remain generally curious about your thoughts, feedback, etc. OR, OR, OR – tell me how much you really love John Mayer and why he’s amazing, or re-post, re-tweet, and share how your share my considerable consternation with the whole unacceptable notion of “Waiting, waiting on the world to change…”  

Social Justice Songs: Imagining Peace & The Great Leap Forward

Performing at the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony for Muhammed Yunis (Founder of The Grameen Bank and so much of the micro-finance movement) makes this Cat Stevens / Yusuf performance especially poignant:

And in a similar vein - imagining future possibilities - is Billy Bragg's classic Waiting for the Great Leap Forward (from the Henry Rollins show, no less):  

Millennium Development Goals, Real Experiences, Human Flourishing

In honor of International Women's Day and also because my Economic Development students are preparing for their midterm, some especially extended reflections on the importance and impact of the Millennium Development Goals...

The Millennium Development Goals are vital for focusing our efforts.  Fifty years previous to the articulation of the MDGs,  the United Nations put forth the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  That declaration, while important, compelling, and the world’s clearest comprehensive statement of what is essential to a fully human experience, is also an aspiration sometimes too overwhelmingly broad to inspire clear action. The Millennium Development Goals boil down to eight concise concerns what next steps are necessary for the world’s progress.

In the scope of development history, the fundamental contribution of the MDGs is that they did clarify eight, actionable and measurable goals on a clear timeline. At times people argue that things like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are too broad and too idealistic. The MDGs not only provide clear and measurable goals on a timeline, their last decade of history also shows us that progress can and will be made on the goals. I’m going to take a moment here to illustrate the goals through individual experiences, while also providing a bit broader background on the components and their connections.



Serious progress is underway for Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger.  Based on current trends, approximately 15% of the world’s people will be living in poverty by 2015. That’s approximately 920 million people - still far too many people to be living in poverty,  but less than half the number of people living in poverty in 1990, only twenty years ago. While the global population has been growing, the number of people in absolute poverty has been dropping. There remains substantial variation in poverty around the world. It has fallen most dramatically in Asia, where state-led growth under authoritarian regimes has flourished. It has also fallen in sub-Saharan African and, most importantly, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 per day has fallen from 46% to 27% throughout the developing world.



Extreme poverty, which is generally the reality for people living on less than that daily $1.25 amount, is debilitating. In situations of extreme poverty, people are so fundamentally lacking in basics - the possibility of education, the experience of general health sufficient to attend school or work regularly, or safe water and basic hygiene - that they arguably cannot be said to be living fully human lives. That may be too harsh, but the extreme deprivation calls attention to the question that development economists and human rights advocates regularly ask, and that is what are the basic conditions necessary for human flourishing. While people living in extreme poverty are obviously humans and they’re obviously living, it would be hard to say that they have  the opportunity for flourishing, and it would even be hard to suggest that they experience full human freedom. That’s part of what Amartya Sen emphasizes in his classic book Development as Freedom.



Sen argues that we cannot talk about development without consideration of how it expands human freedoms. He criticizes those state-led, authoritarian development efforts where economic gains may exist, but people are not free to make their own decisions within those gains or political systems. Development, for  Sen,  is the expansion of human freedoms. And he rightly points out that at least two of the primary building blocks of development - education and health care - are so human-resource-heavy that they are more affordable investments in developing countries where wages are lower. Sen’s Development as Freedom pulled together a long-standing human rights focus on civil and political rights with an emerging consensus on economic and social rights (e.g. health care and education) to make a case for focusing on the human effects and experience of economic development. Development that merely raises GDP,  but neither affects the poor nor expands political freedoms, is not sufficient for Sen.

I want to think about Millennium Development Goals in the context of these photos. These first three are homes in northwest Tanzania. When we talk about people living in extreme deprivation, we’re talking about homes that, as you can see, are often composed of sticks and mud,  with corrugated metal roofs. We’re frequently talking about people who have  no electricity, running water, or methods of personal transportation beyond walking. Sometimes this population has access to mobile phones,  sometimes not. The picture of poverty is made clearer through the relatively recent development of the Multidimensional Poverty Index at The University of Oxford.  That index, with its attention to household education (years of schooling,  child enrollment),  health (child mortality, nutrition),  and standard of living (access to electricity, drinking water, sanitation, flooring, cooking fuel, and a set of basic assets including a mobile phone or bicycle), provides researchers and policymakers with a sharper picture of the experience of individuals around the world. The MPI, already, has helped us understand that half of the world’s MPI poor people live in South Asia,  while just over a quarter are in Africa. The MPI also helps us understand more deeply than a raw income measure  can alone.  In Nigeria, for example, ⅔ of the population is income poor, but a whopping 93% are MPI Poor.   



In the photos,  the first  two homes are outside of town. There are no visible electric lines or other signs of communication network access.  The third photo, despite it still being an extremely basic home and now including a very young child carrying water, also demonstrates proximity to electric lines and tower for radio and cell signals. There’s a great deal of diversity in every bit of Africa, and around the world, and some of these more nuanced  measures, like the MPI, help policymakers better understand what they’re attempting to address. And the UN, in moving the MDGs forward, was trying to address the core issues that will bring the world closer to being a place where all people experience basic freedoms.

This forth photo I’m including to provide more context for what the region I’m talking about looks like and also to provide an image of an extraordinarily common site in East Africa: work. People work a great deal. As the UN reports in respect to progress on Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger, approximately 77% of workers in Subsaharan Africa are in what the UN  calls “vulnerable employment.” They probably work alone, in family operations, or in small and informal local businesses.  They’re not likely to have any stability, benefits, or social protections.  They are most likely working in the informal economy and therefore are unlikely to either be paying into state coffers or to be registered with social safety nets such as the state social security administration.

The man in this photo is most likely selling water. In terms of household consumption, most of the household-level water providers in areas where water access is limited are women and children. Most of the time, if men are carrying water in large volume they’re doing so as part of a business effort and re-selling to local women at what many people would call extraordinarily high rates. They are businessmen operating in a completely unregulated market. The bicycle in this photo is almost certainly from China. Most of the bikes in the area have Chinese characters on them. Chinese trade with and extraction from Africa is soaring. I mention the work because it draws attention to a reality: people work hard in many places around the world,  but without basic social services they are unlikely to be working in a way that will lead to growth and growing opportunities.  I mention the connections to China because it is just one small reminder that the world today really and truly is a deep web of connections. All sorts of patterns and trends - environmental degradation, global disease epidemics, security and terrorism, trade, competition, and growth - are definitively global trends. Every community has global connections. Because of the global nature of threats and opportunities, our response to debilitating conditions of extreme poverty must be global in character too. Hence the MDGs.



I’ll come back around to vulnerable work later. I just alluded to the global challenges we face - environmental degradation, disease epidemics, and terrorism - that stand themselves as strong utilitarian justifications for investing in less developed countries, in an effort to strengthen global stability.  But there’s another reason to meet Millennium Development Goals, and that is the simple human appeal to common dignity and the notion of equal opportunity.  That is why the second goal is to Achieve Universal Primary Education. Kids ought to have opportunities.  And whatever you think the reasons for the developing world’s challenges are - whether you think they have to do with slavery, “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” corrupt dictators, neoliberalism, socialist experiments, or lack of transparent governance from aid agencies through local implementation - it’s nonetheless pretty clear that it’s not the children’s fault.

The UN has good news on this front too.  Tremendous strides have been made in the last ten years, moving the percentage of children in the developing world enrolled in primary education from 82 to 89. As you’ll note in this photo, in Tanzania school access usually means school uniforms.  

Families and aid agencies struggle to be sure the children can afford the single uniform, the pen or pencil they need for work, and the appropriate school materials. Governments have worked steadily to increase school buildings, school enrollments, and numbers of school teachers. As the UN notes, one of the challenges developing countries currently face is increasing the numbers of qualified teachers. Unfortunately, enrollment numbers only indicate the proportion of children who are actually inside school buildings on a regular basis. These numbers say nothing about the quality of the school 

or the ratio of children to qualified and concerned teachers in classrooms. 

This last photo features a set of West Virginia University-Amizade students working with Tanzanian students on some intensive English language instruction. The students and teachers appreciated the attention from people who spoke English as a first language,  and the teachers appreciated the break from their demanding experience of working with 50+ students at a time.

Just like with poverty measures, development researchers and policymakers have improved their understanding of how to think about and measure education in the last several years. First, there’s a relatively recent innovation in the development literature called Development as Human Rights. It suggests, quite similarly to Sen’s notion of development as freedom, that development should be defined as each individual’s opportunity to experience human rights. In respect to education, that would mean not asking whether there is a school, but whether each child has the opportunity to experience education.  That means each child has access to and interaction with good teachers.  It means each child has reading and writing materials.  It means each child has a holistic experience that provides them with real opportunity to learn. That’s a far cry farther than simply building schools.

The second important innovation that relates to education and, really, all development policy work, is Esther Duflo’s contribution of social experiments to fight poverty (For more on Duflo, check out this New Yorker article or her Ted Talk).

Duflo examines very specific policy intervention questions in similar environments that do and do not receive the intervention, then she measures very specific possible related outcomes. In one experiment, for example, she looked at whether incentivizing attendance for para-teachers seemed to be correlated with improved children’s test scores. Duflo’s contributions are important on several fronts.  First, she looks at interventions in quasi-controlled environments and therefore, for the first time in development history, can plausibly tell us if development dollars are having effects that wouldn’t otherwise exist in the community. Second, and equally importantly, she works and experiments very much in the context of development realities. Duflo does not visit once and then go back to her office to suggest broad development theories. She and her team of researchers are continuously considering very specific interventions very much in their empirical context. Due to this real commitment to serious empiricism, Duflo answers the objections often brought against conventional development economists, by people like “Barefoot Economics” advocate Manfreed Max Neef, who argue that economists’ supposed insights have little to do with what’s happening in real communities.

As the United Nations and countries continue to work to enroll all children in schooling, they must give policy attention to getting children and staff to attend school regularly. They must ensure children have the resources to succeed at school. And they must be sure well-trained teachers are in the classroom. That’s an awfully tall order, as the global brain drain regularly pulls top-performing people out of developing countries and rural communities with the promise of success and riches in the growing cities and regions at the heart of the global economy.

For women, leaving is often especially attractive.  If they can get out, they frequently have more opportunities in developed countries and major cities because of the better gender equality that typically exists there. Some have argued, most recently Nickolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (in their brilliant book Half the Sky), that Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality, is the most important of development goals. 


I remember when I first read an assertion of that kind. It was in Foreign Policy magazine during the summer of 2007.  I was on a plane, returning to Tanzania for the second time. I thought, there must be a more important, all-encompassing goal: perhaps ending poverty, or promoting safe water access and hygiene for everyone. And then that summer I worked intensively with WOMEDA, The Women’s Emancipation and Development Agency, for the first time.

At WOMEDA's request, I worked with a group of students to do an analysis that determined the average distance women walked to receive services from WOMEDA was 26 miles. We worked with women who had been so completely abused, ignored, and marginalized by their spouses and communities that they had been nearly stripped of their humanity.  I say nearly because these were the women fighting back, one way or another.  They had their humanity, because they were asserting their dignity.  They knew their inherent worth. And in working with those women I understood on a visceral level why promoting gender equality is the most important development goal: because until we have gender equality roughly half the world – a bit less than half because gender equality is becoming a reality a few places – but nonetheless until we have gender equality roughly half the world is not part of the possibility.  We need gender equality because as it becomes a reality we add nearly 3 billion potential solution-makers, innovators, and leaders to the world. 3 billion, largely off-line at the moment.    

Vulnerable employment, that challenge named above in the discussion of Goal 1: End Poverty and Hunger, is a severe challenge particularly for women. These women completed a training program run by a local nongovernmental organization to become seamstresses. 

And indeed they are both eager to work and diligent at whatever work they get. They, like most people I’ve met in the developing world, don’t mind work at all. What would be ideal would be transparent government, good and strong public institutions and policies, and the rules and regulations necessary to recognize work, tax a small portion of it, and create some real social safety nets and public programs.

Taxation and public spending are necessary to help address Goals 4, 5, and 6: Reduce Child Mortality, Improve Maternal Health, and Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases. Across the board, these goals relate to important, achievable expenditures in public health infrastructure to prevent unnecessary and untimely death or severe discomfort. The deprivation relating to these issues in rural Tanzania is often jarring: women regularly walk several miles to rural health clinics after their water breaks.  Through working with WOMEDA, I met a woman walking home several miles following a tubal ligation. She had opted for the procedure after her husband beat her for having too many children (return to Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality).

I’ve also had the good fortune to work with the extraordinarily dedicated nursing staff and doctor at Nyakahanga Hospital, in Omurushaka, Tanzania. Through that relationship and other connections through the global nonprofit organization Amizade,  I met Charl Kapp. Charl came to Tanzania through Amizade, an organization that arranges service-learning programs and volunteer vacations for people of all ages.  Charl is retired. She primarily serves as a deacon at her church in rural Northwest Pennsylvania. Charl found many things jarring in rural Tanzania. What she chose to do upon return was work with her church to start something called the milk project. Because of the shockingly low amount of resources available to the hospital in Omurushaka, children who are there only receive ugali as they recover. Ugali is a kind of porridge. It will fill the stomach but does little for nutrition. Charl noticed this. Through the milk project, monthly donations from a church in rural Northwest Pennsylvania provide children at the hospital with milk as they recover from whatever it is they’re addressing in the hospital. The children in the hospital now recover faster.  They gain weight faster.  They grow faster. When resources are shared responsibly, in this and many other examples, clear health gains are made.

Children and mothers now die needlessly.  As the UN Millennium Development Goals Report indicates:

On children: Four diseases – pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and AIDS – accounted for 43% of all deaths in children under 5 in 2008. Most of these lives could have been saved through low-cost prevention and treatment measures, including antibiotics for acute respiratory infections, oral rehydration for diarrhea, immunization, and the use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets and appropriate drugs for malaria.

And on mothers: The leading causes of maternal mortality in developing regions are hemorrhage and hypertension, which together account for half of all deaths in expectant or new mothers. …. The vast majority of these deaths are avoidable. Hemorrhage, for example,  which accounts for over one third of maternal deaths, can be prevented or managed through a range of interventions administered by a skilled health-care provider with adequate equipment and supplies.

Unfortunately, progress has stalled in reducing the number of teenage pregnancies and expanding the use of contraceptives among women,  particularly among poor and uneducated women. I call this unfortunate because when women have greater say in their timing and number of pregnancies they’re more likely to receive prenatal care and have the resources necessary to invest in the child’s growth and development once it’s here.  Women with this education and these choices, in other words, are more likely to have healthy, happy children. Progress may have stalled for many different plausible reasons, but one possibility is a drop in funding dedicated to family planning. The US is in an odd position in this story, particularly in relation to Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development.

I say the US is in an odd position because, even as it catches criticism for dedicating a relatively low portion of its national budget to international development spending, its especially large economy makes it one of the largest global givers.  And beyond that, as none other than Bono recognized (as he delivered the 2006 US National Prayer Breakfast), God’s politics in the US has had a decidedly inconsistent impact on international development policies. Left and right have come around to the importance of development assistance, for reasons ranging from utilitarian interest to charity to justice. President George W. Bush focused absolutely unprecedented attention on African development assistance, but domestic politics also required that he step away from anything approaching family planning.

As Nicholas Kristof has consistently reported in his New York Times columns and blog entries, as well as in the book he co-authored with his wife Sheryl WuDunn, US political dialogue has too frequently prevented common-sense education and family planning policies. Out of fear that talking openly about sex, condoms, and contraceptives will lead to promiscuity, less talk about any of the preceding leads to increasing numbers of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. And all too often those lead to legal and illegal abortions. We do better when we get past left and right and look at the real effects of policy choices. If we give more attention to education, more women and girls will have choices, more babies will come to families prepared for children, and fewer girls will face the substantial set of challenges that come with unwanted pregnancy.


Left and right can also come together to achieve Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Stability. There are small signs of gains in environmental stability.  For example, the rate of deforestation is decreasing. Yet much more must be done. As the World Bank’s Changing the Climate for Development makes clear, environmental protection may be accomplished as much with the traditional left’s regulations as it will be with the traditional right’s market-based pricing. What is absolutely clear, according to the vast majority of the world’s scientists, is that environmental sustainability and protection needs urgent attention. The success of the Montreal Protocol on Ozone-depleting substances makes the possibility and importance of global agreements abundantly clear. Between 1986 and 2008 global consumption of ozone-depleting substances dropped 98 percent. This is a remarkable achievement made possible by global agreement of countries gathered through nothing less than enlightened self-interest. That single success story comes within a sea of concern: habitats are disappearing and species face extinction as global biodiversity decreases.

According to the Millennium Development Goals report,  the world is on track to meet the goal of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015, but the goal relating to adequate sanitation will not be reached. According to the UN Development Program, access to safe water and sanitation are stronger development drivers than any other development intervention evaluated, including health and education. For every dollar invested in water access, economies witness a $4.5 return. Even more impressive, for every dollar invested in sanitation, economies witness a $9.1 return. Safe water access and functional sanitation systems are development drivers.  When people have access to safe water and sanitation systems, they avoid sickness far more easily. They’re more able to attend school and work. Water and sanitation are foundational.

Goal 8, finally, and as I’d mentioned before,  is to develop a global  partnership for development. What is meant by this in the simplest of terms is – there is far more than enough wealth in the world to achieve these goals.  Some relatively modest redistribution would provide the resources necessary to meet the MDGs. Development aid has increased, but the average level of assistance is well below the .7% goal agreed  to at the United Nations (That’s seven-tenths of one percent of each developed country’s annual budget).  The only countries to reach or exceed that target in 2008 were Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. The largest countries by volume, meanwhile, were The United States, France,  Germany, The United Kingdom, and Japan.

Beyond aid, developing countries are also eager to access developed country markets, and compete in a global trading system unfettered by high tariffs and without going up against extravagant subsidy systems in place in developed countries,  particularly in the agricultural sector. A few exciting things are happening on this front. First,  tariffs are dropping generally speaking,  though not as quickly as desired. Second, there are moves in several developed countries to chip away at these subsidies and to permit competition on an actual common playing field. One essential component in a truly competitive market is access to information, and with the growing global coverage of cell networks and access to cell phones,  we’re seeing developing country producers gain access to information about the markets that affect them. We’re seeing banking applications, which means better understanding of one’s own access to credit. Information access changes everything.

The 2009 data in the Millennium Development Goals report indicates 67% of the world’s people have access to mobile phones. Indeed, a recent National Geographic compilation of the world’s “typical person” declares that person is Asian, male, and a cell phone owner and operator. 

In this region in Tanzania I’ve mentioned a few  times, in 2006 there was very little cell network coverage. In 2007 there was some. By 2008 it was possible to use a laptop plug-in to access the internet through the regional cell coverage. That’s fortunate, but most of the world still does not have access to the abundance of information that the internet provides.

The Millennium Development Goals report provides much more reason for optimism than pessimism. Time-bound, specific targets have led to real gains in the specified areas. This means opportunity and empowerment for people all around the world. This means development as freedom and the opportunity for human flourishing. What’s interesting about Duflo is that she helps us know what specific interventions are supporting this effort. The MDGs report has less to say about that. For me,  I’m less interested in the grand theories and causal explanations – everyone seems to want to offer whether the culprit is capitalism or communism, slavery or selfishness – and far more interested in whether we’re working toward a world where more people have more access to more opportunity. Duflo’s work lets us get down into a level of detail about how that might be happening. And the MDGs give us goals to work toward and celebrate as we meet successes along the way.