Esther Duflo speaking at Pop!Tech in 2009. Photo: kk + (flickr)

Ever wonder why some development projects succeed while others fail?

Esther Duflo and her colleagues at MIT’s Poverty Action Lab are working on the answer. Duflo is one of the newest recipients of the MacArthur Genius Grant because of her commitment to investigating what causes poverty to persist in some developing countries and what works to alleviate it.

She does this by setting up controlled field experiments in some of the poorest countries in Africa and South Asia. These experiments set out to prove how social and economic forces fuel the cycle of poverty in these areas. They also test how effective foreign aid projects are at lifting people out of poverty.

Duflo conducts her experiments using a method that mimics how drug companies conduct randomized medical trials. One group participates in a development project while the other does not. The differences between them are then measured to see if the project worked, and exactly how well.

Some of Duflo’s best known work is on HIV prevention in Kenya. Her research shows it’s more effective to teach girls specific ways to reduce their risk — like avoiding sexual relations with older men — than teaching basic medical facts about HIV and emphasizing abstinence as the best method of prevention. As she explains in her recent article for VoxEU.org, girls who were given risk-reduction information now use condoms more often, stay in school longer, and become pregnant less often.

“Economics is about the best way to allocate resources, and finding out what works is important to understanding how to allocate these resources,” Duflo told Philanthropy Action. Too few development strategies are vigorously tested. Proving what works can help.

(For more information on the Poverty Action Lab, check out Sarah Standish’s post "Researching Better Ways to End Poverty.")

Wadango has already distributed around 10,000 solar-powered lanterns. Photo: **Mary** (flickr)

In rural Kenya nearly everyone uses kerosene as their main source of power. For those living on less than $1 a day — as about half the population does — this expense takes away a significant portion of their income. Kerosene costs the average African family almost $100 a year, according to the blog White African. And that's why Evans Wadongo's goal of providing solar-powered lanterns to rural Kenyans is so admirable.

In fact, Evans Wadongo and his work with solar lanterns was featured in a recent "CNN Heroes" video. In the video, Wadongo shows how these simple lanterns can do much good for rural Kenyans.

Families with solar lanterns can now spend the money they used to spend on kerosene on necessities like food and medicine. The lanterns are also much better for studying at night. Kerosene lanterns smother kids in smoke and can be harsh on their eyes because the light they give off is so dim. Solar lanterns provide brighter light without all the pollution — giving both kids and the environment a brighter future.

Thanks to Wadongo and his nonprofit sponsor Sustainable Development for All-Kenya, 10,000 of these lanterns have been distributed to rural Kenyans for free. You can help out by clicking here and donating to Sustainable Development for All-Kenya. A $20 donation provides a solar lantern for a family in need.

A child in Mexico City earns his wage cleaning windshields. Photo: Beto (Kuh) (Flickr)

So far, more than 4 million Mexican families have benefited from a government program aimed at combating some of the country’s toughest problems: poverty, illiteracy and poor health.

Oportunidades, which began in 2002, takes the innovative approach of paying these families to go to school, eat well and stay healthy. Eight years later, the concept is gaining international momentum.

The program is based on a “conditional-cash” idea, whereby eligible adults are given money for achieving specific goals, including regular medical checkups, taking classes on healthier eating habits, and making sure their children are enrolled in school.

Santiago Levy, a social economist and one of the men credited with implementing the “conditional-cash” approach in Mexico, recently spoke about Oportunitidades with PBS. Levy said that he wanted to focus on lasting ways to bring people out of poverty.

These families were trapped in … some kind of an intergenerational mechanism, by which parents were poor, children were poor, and the next generation were also poor. The kids were so poor, they had to be picking coffee in the fields, and they couldn't go to school ... [Through Oportunidades,] what you are saying is, your kid will be equally valuable to you if he's in the school, as opposed if he is in the street begging for money.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Oportunidades is its rigorous evaluation process. The program uses an outside firm to review every aspect of its impact, and so far the results have been convincing. In some affected regions, school enrollment is up 20 percent for girls and 10 percent for boys, according to a World Bank report.

The unique evaluation process has also offered Oportunidades a certain degree of credibility and international recognition. PBS reports that more than 30 counties — many in South America and Southeast Asia — are developing their own "conditional cash" programs.

Angola has an estimated 13 billion barrels of oil. Photo: Kaysha (flickr)

Angola is consistantly ranked as one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. But a recent Economist article suggests that thanks to Angola's extensive oil reserves, things are starting to improve. In fact, Angola's economy is expected to grow by 8 percent this year, which would make the country one of the top five economic performers worldwide.

But having an economy dependent on oil can have its downsides, the Economist points out. For example, after several years of ever-increasing oil prices, the price of oil rapidly declined in 2008 — dragging Angola's economy down with it.

Despite this volatility, Angola's economy has recently gotten back on track. And thanks to new government initiatives, the Economist reports that the people are starting to see the benefits.

The government plans to build one million homes for shack-dwellers by 2012. Teachers and doctors are being trained, children sent back to school, clinics opened, water-purification plants installed, electricity brought to villages and urban slums. José Eduardo dos Santos, Angola's autocratic yet popular leader for the past 30 years, has even pledged — for the first time — to reduce corruption.

Eritrean child receiving a vaccine. Photo: daveblume (flickr)

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $10 billion-commitment over ten years to vaccinate children in developing countries on Friday. The nonprofit is calling on world leaders to join in this effort, aimed at drastically reducing the number of deaths of children under 5 years old.

There are economic benefits to reducing child mortality in developing countries as well. Countries with lower child mortality rates tend to be more economically developed, according to the World Health Organization.

Cassandra Nelson helps to distribute high-energy biscuits to locals at a hospital in Port-au-Prince. Mercy Corps

Yesterday the banks reopened in Haiti for the first time since the earthquake rocked the small island on January 12th.

Mercy Corps' spokeswoman Cassandra Nelson, who is on the ground in Port-au-Prince, stressed the importance of the banks reopening in her latest post on the Mercy Corps blog. "This means a lot to the aid effort, because there are a lot of people in Port-au-Prince who have some money — maybe not a lot — but they were having to live on handouts simply because they couldn't access their money." Without cash on hand, even wealthier Haitians were forced to seek handouts while the banks were closed.

As cash became more readily available throughout the day, Nelson saw the street economy reinvigorate from the rubble of damaged store fronts. Hawkers selling bananas and mangoes are helping restart the flow of food and resources within the country, allowing aid agencies to focus on those who are most in need of help.

You can keep up with the latest news about Mercy Corps' relief efforts in Haiti by clicking here.

Antiretroviral drugs. Photo: shortie 66 (flickr)

An enormous barrier in the fight against HIV/AIDS in developing nations has started to crumble.

Last month, the international drug purchaser and WHO-partner organization UNITAID announced plans to form a patent pool to lower the cost of some of the most expensive medications used to treat HIV, reports the Guardian. The agreement is a blessing for the estimated 14 million people who do not have access to affordable treatment — most of whom live in developing nations, says UNAIDS, a branch of the UN that deals specifically with HIV/AIDS.

The patent pool will allow generic pharmaceutical companies to develop medications that are still protected under patent laws in exchange for royalties. Consequently, the competition between generic manufacturers lowers the overall price of the drug. By UNITAID's estimate, the cost of some drugs will fall from $1,000 a year to as little as $100.

Not only will more people have access to these new drugs, the drugs themselves will become better. Fixed-dose combination medications (FDCs), formed from different compounds that work well when used together but are often developed by competing pharmaceutical companies, have been hard to create under old patent laws, reports UNITAID. In contrast, the pool gives manufacturers access to a variety of different compounds to make more effective and easier-to-use FDCs.

So far, UNITAID has identified 19 drugs from nine different pharmaceutical companies to bring into the pool. Although there has been resistance by a few of the companies — who are in no way obligated to enter the pool — many like Merck and Gilead have already pledged to put some of their top medications into the pool. “Today is a good day for people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries,” noted one UNITAID official.

Innovative practices in Indian health care are make surgeries more affordable. Photo: World Bank Photo Collection (flickr)

The numbers alone say a lot: A heart surgery that costs between $20,000 and $40,000 in the United States can cost only $2,000 in India.

The medical tourism industry has always taken advantage of lower health care costs in India and other developing countries. Some, however, are thinking beyond that. The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Dr. Devi Shetty, an Indian physician who has radically rethought the way heart surgery is managed and priced to make it more affordable than ever before.

Quite simply, Dr. Shetty is making heart surgery cheaper by doing more of it, says The Journal. The heart hospital he opened in India has 1,000 beds (the average U.S. hospital has 160 beds), and the sheer number of surgeries it performs gives it a lot of bargaining power for the equipment that it buys — carefully chosen for its cost. His physicians do more surgeries per day and repeat the same procedure more often than American doctors, giving them invaluable experience and expertise. Dr. Shetty plans to expand his private hospital complex significantly in the the next five years — a move that will give him even more leverage over suppliers.

Dr. Shetty's cost-cutting drive was propelled by a desire to make heart surgery affordable for Indians, after he understood the incompatibility of expensive health care and poverty. $2,000 for a life-saving surgery can be prohibitively expensive for some Indians, so many patients pay their medical bills through a special insurance plan developed by Dr. Shetty, in partnership with government officials from the state of Karnataka.

Dr. Shetty suspects that this kind of health care is likely to appeal to Westerners as well. He plans to open another hospital in the Cayman Islands specifically to serve Americans who want to lower their own health bills.

Catching on to a bright idea. Photo: Chealion (flickr)

Reuters reports that despite the recession, American consumer spending on products that are considered "green" has in fact been going up.

U.S. supermarket sales of environmentally sustainable or "ethical" products — from energy-efficient light bulbs to organic produce — will rise about 8.7 percent in 2009 to nearly $38 billion

Reasons behind going green range from personal health to global warming, but Scott Bearse, of the financial consulting group Deloitte, thinks there may be more to it. He tells Reuters, "[t]he financial crisis reminded people of the unintended consequences of collective behavior."

Adolescent girls in developing countries miss up to 50 days of school each year because their families can't afford to buy them sanitary pads.

Fortunately, a start-up called Sustainable Health Enterprises (or the cleverly abbreviated SHE) is working to reverse this trend by helping Rwandan women start their own low-cost sanitary pad businesses. SHE is helping girls stay in school and increasing their potential earning power in the process. One additional year of primary school for a girl means a 10-20 percent increase in her future wages, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study.

This short, eye-catching video explains why SHE is doing the work that it does... The music's great, too.

Plasmodium falciparum (malaria) parasite taking over red blood cells. Photo: Eric Fortin (Flickr)

A team of engineers at the University of California at Berkeley are pushing the limits of cell phone technology with the development of their newly minted Cellscope.

The device is a six-inch microscope that attaches to a cell phone’s digital camera lens to take high resolution microscopic images of blood and sputum samples. The Cellscope's compact size and durability makes it ideal for use in the field, nearly eliminating the health worker's need for expensive tabletop microscopes.

The Cellscope team, led by Principal Investigator Dan Fletcher, has been able to reliably identify pathogens from two of the most prominent diseases in the underdeveloped world — malaria and tuberculosis. Combined, the World Health Organization estimates that the two diseases kill 2.7 million people each year, although both are treatable if caught early. (The vast majority of malaria and tuberculosis cases are found in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia respectively.) The Cellscope offers healthcare workers in remote areas a valuable diagnostic tool, aiding in reliable early detection of these two diseases.

Right now the Cellscope is still being tested in the field. But the UC Berkeley team hopes that in time, data captured by the Cellscope will be uploaded to a central database, allowing medical workers to track the spread of diseases more efficiently than ever before.

Thomas Benke (center) works with Sichuan Research Institute of Environmental Protection chemists and OFSSA staff to set-up the Gas Chromatograph. Photo: Courtesy of Thomas Benke.

Four years ago, a petrochemical plant on the border of China and Russia spilled 100 metric tons of the toxic chemicals into a tributary of the Amur River. The river is the main drinking supply for a town in Russia named Khabarovsk, and it put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.

Naturally, Khabarovsk turned to Moscow for help. But they also contacted a group of friends in Portland — including my dad.

My dad, Thomas Benke, has been involved in the Portland-Khabarovsk Sister-City Association, or PKSCA, for many years. And his actions after the toxic spill showed me that sister-city associations can be a means for not only cultural exchange but also serious global cooperation.

PKSCA implements a wide reach of humanitarian programs in Khabarovsk that include solid-waste management, emergency services, educational exchanges, hospitals, orphanages, and village schools. And it, along with Oregon Fujian Sister State Association (OFSSA), has responded to disasters such as chemical spills and earthquakes. My dad has volunteered for both. One of his main motivators has been to help preserve the environment. (He holds degrees in chemical engineering and environmental law.)

There is an undeniable synergy between a clean environment and economic development. The old idea that there must be some trade-off between economic development and environmental protection in developing economies is gradually being replaced by the realization that the foundation of economic development — a healthy workforce — thrives on clean air, clean water and an unpolluted landscape.

My father explained to me that soon after the spill in Khabarovsk, he traveled there to deliver and introduce a Gas Chromatograph, a device for testing drinking water in disaster areas. The device was purchased by the City of Portland. In May 2007, PKSCA followed up by inviting two chemists from the Vodokanal (Khabarovsk Water Bureau) to work with the Portland Water Bureau and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Most importantly, PKSCA set up a training session at SRI Instruments in Los Angeles — the company that built the Gas Chromatograph. SRI Instruments' contribution was substantial — they built a specialized device that could detect the contaminants in the Amur River and provided free repair for the device.

Not only did PKSCA quickly respond to the water crisis in Khabarovsk, but by providing further training sessions in the United States, they also sustained and fostered a stronger more informative relationship between Portland and Khabarovsk officials, as well as sister-city board members.

On May 12, 2008, an 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck China’s Sichuan Province, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing nearly five million. Immediately, Fujian Province requested assistance from its Sister State, Oregon, for whatever aid they could provide. Below, Thomas described the international and OFSSA response to the crisis.

The world responded with cash and supplies. The people of Oregon donated cash generously through several local and international non-profit organizations. The Oregon-Fujian Sister State Association, because of its unique relationship with Fujian Province, resolved to do more — to donate emergency response tools that would leverage Sichuan Province’s capacity to respond.

The pre-existing relationship of trust between the two jurisdictions allowed Fujian province to request help from Oregon. The Sister-Province relationship made all the difference — we were able to overcome the cultural issues of pride and face that might have otherwise required Fujian province to decline aid. It's all about overcoming the formidable cultural barriers, and I think that that's the key.

It's the difference between your neighbor, somebody in your community coming in and offering help as opposed to a stranger from someplace you know nothing about.

When my dad first explained sister city associations right after the toxic spill four years ago, I thought he was obsessed with his involvement in both organizations. Now about to graduate from college, I plan to follow his lead and hope to work internationally for an NGO.

Plumpy’nut is frequently used by humanitarian agencies in emergency malnutrition situations. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Humanitarian agencies have long been using protein and energy bars filled with nutrients and vitamins when responding to food emergencies. Though these "ready-to-use foods" are seen everywhere on grocery shelves in the West, they're often viewed as lifesavers when food crises strike the developing world.

BBC News recently highlighted the efforts of two British doctors, Steve Collins and Alistair Hallam, who saw the great results these easily accessible foods can have on malnourished populations. The doctors have taken the idea of ready-to-use foods even further with their company, Valid Nutrition, which manufactures foods supplemented with important nutrients found in meat and vegetables — foods most Africans can’t afford. While majority of emergency food packets contain high sugar concentrations and supplements that help in emergency relief areas, Valid Nutrition's products contain nutrients that are important in a person's daily diet and are sold at an affordable price. The company has opened manufacturing factories in various African countries, creating jobs for locals and helping the economy by using local crops.

Instead of only using these foods during emergency relief situations, the doctors want to help treat severe acute malnutrition, where a person's weight for height measurement is 70 percent below the median range due to food shortage and/or illness, according to the World Health Organization.

"The idea is to target people suffering from a less acute, but more widespread form of malnutrition that affects a staggering two billion people worldwide," reports BBC News.

Fortification of food for the developing world is not a new idea. Other companies such as Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, a Swiss nonprofit, has programs in various developing countries providing food for the poor. In fact, Gain is trying to put more market pressure on firms to “develop new, affordable nutritious foods by convincing business it is missing a vast untapped market.”

A group of men plant crops in Kenya. Photo: World Bank Photo Collection (flickr)

Earlier this week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack reiterated the United States' commitment to reduce Africa's dependence on food aid and promote agricultural sustainability while in Nairobi, Kenya. Vilsack said the U.S. will focus efforts on providing "affordable credit to farmers, support to women farmers and providing new technology to encourage irrigation."

The United States understands that it has to be more than providing periodic emergency food aid. It has to focus on sustainable solutions to hunger, food security and poverty. This is not something where we come in and say this is the way you need to do it, it is where we come in and say how are you doing it and how can we help you do it better.

His comments come almost a month after G-8 members pledged $20 billion dollars to fight hunger in poor nations.

A Mercy Corps beneficiaries show off their garden in Niger. Photo: Jeremy Barnicle/Mercy Corps

Last week the UN announced that the number of people suffering from hunger now totals one billion worldwide.

Not too surprisingly, a BBC article points out that the vast majority of the world's hungry live in developing countries. Only 15 million are in the developed world. In contrast, 265 million live in sub-Saharan Africa and more than two times as many — 642 million to be exact — live in the Asia-Pacific region.

Since the economic crisis hit, there are about 100 million more people that are hungry. The UN attributes this rise in world hunger to unemployment and low wages. This is turn hurts people's ability to buy and grow food.

Jacques Diouf, the director general of the UNFAO, focused on agricultural investment as one of the solutions to help developing countries address hunger issues. Diouf is quoted by the BBC as saying, "Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome poverty and hunger and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth."

At a time when need has never been greater, Mercy Corps has been able to expand our capacity to address hunger in the communities where we work.