development

No rain in California is a disaster for all of us. But the drought, now entering its fourth year, is also an opportunity.

Last weekend's This American Life included a great Planet Money segment about GiveDirectly, a charity that gives poor Kenyans not food or equipment or livestock or training but cash. The idea is that, whatever risks or downsides exist in just giving people money, these are outweighed by a) extremely low overhead, and b) the fact that the poor actually know best what they need.

The developed world's negligence has produced one of Africa's cruelest ironies: its farmers are its hungriest people.

Paul Farmer has a keen sense of the tendency to portray
Haitians as helpless victims. This is well evident in his poignant
chronicle of the year that began with the January 2010 earthquake.

I should have seen my road to Damascus moment approaching. I’d been warned.