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.

The neglect of an Indian complaint box: Fighting corruption requires active prevention measures. Photo: watchsmart (flickr)

It's known, but not talked about: Sometimes humanitarian aid doesn't make it into the hands of those who need it. Why? Because small-scale local corruption can siphon off money or goods, make aid agencies run less efficiently, or even exploit those who are dependent on such assistance.

A new handbook produced by Transparency International aims to help aid agencies reduce the risk of corruption. Its concrete suggestions cover the mundane, the profane, and everything in between — from how to tell if local staff might be driving agency vehicles outside of work to how to ensure that aid recipients aren't sexually abused by humanitarian workers.

The report offers some overarching suggestions, too: Aid agencies must plan ways to combat corruption in disaster zones before such calamities strike, not afterwards. Over the long term, they must get to know local culture and power structures well, since that is often the key to recognizing sources of malfeasance.

The handbook's recommendations have come just in time to be useful in Haiti, a senior Transparency International Advisor told AlertNet:

It's what I'd call a perfect storm for high corruption risk: you have a seriously damaged institutional infrastructure, a country with endemic corruption, a weak or fragile state in the best of circumstances and sudden influxes of huge amounts of resources to a highly vulnerable population.

Such a report cannot be taken seriously enough.

A market in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Haiti’s informal economy has begun to flourish despite the destruction caused by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit the country on Jan. 12, the GlobalPost reports.

[D]espite the lawlessness and absence of government, the Haitian people have started to reactivate their street economy amid the ruins, providing a vital lifeline… as the first week since the quake came to a close, Haitians pulled their few resources together to get small shops and market stalls open, rickety buses and motorbike taxis moving and local radio stations on air.

At two weeks after the disaster, many residents are still living and sleeping outdoors. These conditions have contributed to a new street culture in Port-au-Prince, where many are finding new business opportunities. The Miami Herald says barbers, impromptu phone booths and laundry services can be found at almost every street corner.

Even before the earthquake it's estimated that 80 percent of workers in Port-au-Prince operated in the informal economy, according to the Miami Herald. With the city now in ruins, the Herald suggests that many Haitians previously employed in the formal sector are looking for more informal work so they can earn a little money.

Sauveur Celestine, who was once an accountant, tells the Herald that he is now recharging cell phones using discarded car batteries to make ends meet. “This has enabled me to earn some money that is not a great amount,” says Celestine “but at least it is enough for me to buy two meals a day.”

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.

December's Comment of the Month winner Jill Scantlan from Portland commented on Sarah Standish' post Researching Better Ways to End Poverty. She points out that community involvement is crucial to an aid program's success. She further argues that success should be measured both qualitatively and quantitatively. For her efforts, we will make a $25 donation to a project of her choice on Global Giving. Here's her comment:

This story brings up a lot of important issues concerning development projects. What is the most cost-effective way to improve literacy? Should we invest in providing lap tops for children or a mid-day meal program? How do we measure this?

I have spent a substantial amount of time observing and talking with NGOs in India who wrestle with these same issues. On the one hand, NGOs are usually bound to a government scheme, and on the other to an international aid agency. They have to prove that their projects are working and be able to measure that success in various forms of deliverables. In the end, some NGOs are successful and some make very little impact. What is the distinguishing factor?

What I have noticed is that the NGOs who use community participation in all (or most) of the stages of a project and who make the project fit the community (and not the other way around) are the most successful. In some cases, these approaches are not easily quantifiable.

J-PAL relies purely on quantitative measurements where a mixture of quantitative and qualitative would be more appropriate. A randomized sample, though statistically sound, can only tell you so much. Assessment and success goes beyond meeting targets and quotas. It is usually found in the attitudes and behavior of a community, which cannot be measured by numbers alone.

Keep writing in and share your though-provoking comments for a chance to win $25 towards the well-deserving charity of your choice!

* Lest anyone think $25 is not a lot, consider these figures from our affiliate Mercy Corps: $25 delivers clean, safe drinking water to 50 people in one of eastern Congo's sprawling displacement camps. $25 provides seeds to farmers in cyclone-devastated areas of Myanmar to plant five acres of rice. $25 gives traumatized children in Darfur 12 weeks of activities and psychological care to help them heal.

View of impromptu tent city in the middle of Haiti's capital. Photo: United Nations Development Programme (flickr)

Haiti has just received another powerful blow. A powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti's capital on Tuesday, devastating a country that has seen more than its share of disasters both man-made and natural over the last few years. The news reports trickling in paint a bleak picture of almost unimaginable ruin.

I was privileged to witness some amazing progress in this tiny country that has long carried the dubious distinction of being the poorest nation in the western hemisphere during my annual and semi-annual trips to the island nation since the election of a new president in 2006. Paved roads and bridges had begun to appear across raging rivers that kept villages isolated. In the small community of 40,000 where most of my work took me, Engineers Without Borders drilled and installed seven clean water wells that dramatically lowered the infant mortality death rate. In a community that had once had just one Cuban-trained health worker who functioned without medicine or equipment, a small staff of doctors and nurses began to provide health care. A fragile sliver of hope had begun to take root.

This earthquake has devastated a country that does not have the resources to recover on its own. Mercy Corps’s has dispatched a response team to rush critical supplies and other urgent assistance to survivors. More staffers will arrive in the coming days.

As more aid workers arrive, they will face huge challenges. Haiti's international airport has just one runway and no taxiways, so airplanes that land there have to do a U-turn at the end of the runway and taxi back to a parking space. I can imagine that right now, that one runway and the airspace around Port au Prince is busier than a Los Angeles freeway. On the ground, the Mercy Corps team may find that accommodations are sparse or non-existent. Reports indicate that even major buildings in the capital city have been heavily damaged or destroyed. Security will also be an issue. The United Nations peacekeeping forces have provided the most reliable security in the country, but they themselves have been devastated by the death and injury of key personnel. Food and safe drinking water were never abundant, but now they will be even scarcer. Over the coming weeks and months Haitians will face tremendous obstacles to recovery.

Thankfully, the professionals at Mercy Corps have seen all of this before. They have a long history of helping earthquake survivors in other countries: Peru, China, Pakistan, and Indonesia. I have no doubts about their capacity to provide the best possible support in this situation. Several people have asked how they could best help with Mercy Corps’s effort. Really, the best way anyone could help is to make a cash donation to the Mercy Corps Haiti Earthquake Fund. As a matter of policy Mercy Corps does not use volunteers or donated materials like clothing from the general public in their relief efforts.

With a combination of generous donations and Mercy Corps' tremendous professional resources we can help Haiti survive this devastating body blow and replant the small seeds of hope that I saw grow there over the past few years.

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.

In the spirit of the season, we're challenging our readers to make a small (or large) gift to our parent organization, Mercy Corps. Mercy Corps shares Global Envision's belief in the power of global markets to alleviate poverty and employs a market-driven approach to their economic development programs around the world. We've set a symbolic goal of $575 — that's the number of posts we've published on Global Envision since the launch of the blog in April of 2008.

In that time we've written hundreds posts highlighting the economic tie-in on topics ranging from mobile banking to child brides in Yemen. We offered extensive coverage of the global economic crisis and followed how innovation in design is lowering the prices for things like drip irrigation systems, refrigerators and heart surgery in India. We've explained why big business may actually be an ally to the environment.

Please take us up on our challenge and pitch in a few bucks. Thank you for your readership, your comments and your support.

Happy holidays,

Chelsea Wieber

In 1978, the poor West African country of Liberia borrowed $6 million from a New York bank. The Liberian government promised to use the money to buy and develop an oil refinery, and to pay the money back in seven years.

Today it's not clear if either of those things ever happened.

Two years after the loan, the Liberian government was overthrown in a coup, which later led to a 14-year civil war. Meanwhile, the loan was bought and sold several times, according to allAfrica.com.

But now two investment funds say they hold the note and are entitled to $20 million from the current government of Liberia — a claim upheld by a London court. Today Liberia is led by a democratic government whose president is working with the IMF and World Bank to settle old debts. The Guardian says Liberia struck deals with most of its private-sector creditors, but these two funds are refusing to settle, demanding full payment through the courts.

A representative for the Jubilee Debt Campaign, a coalition fighting for debt relief for the world's poorest countries, accuses funds like these of "profiting from poverty."

As Al-Jazeera's Barbara Serra reports:

So-called vulture funds have been condemned by several governments for preying on the world's poorest states. They buy up the debt of near-bankrupt nations at a cheap price from financial institutions. They then sue those nations in international courts for the full value of the debt, plus steep levels of interest and penalty charges. Every year, developed countries spend billions of dollars to help pay off the debts of poorer nations, but vulture funds siphon off that money for themselves.

Even the lawyer for Liberia says this is a moral issue as well as a legal one. Get the full scoop from this Al-Jazeera video:

Helping or hurting? NATO delivers aid in Afghanistan. Photo: Isafmedia (flickr)

How can you best fight global poverty? Academics, journalists, economists and sometimes even celebrities have been vigorously discussing this question for years, with big names like Jeffery Sachs, William Easterly, Dambisa Moyo, and Bono weighing in on the question of whether or not development aid actually helps the poor.

Writer and well-known humanitarian and development aid advocate Nicholas Kristof succinctly and candidly summarized the debate last week in an essay for the New York Times Book Review. (See my post "What a Marshall Plan Could Do For Africa" for more on the aid debate.)

Acknowledging that all sides have some cogent points, Kristof admits that "doing good is harder than it looks." But he's still an advocate of development aid:

The upshot is that we can now see that there are many aid programs that work very well. We don’t need to distract ourselves with theoretical questions about aid [...]. The new synthesis should embrace specific interventions that all sides agree have merit, while also borrowing from an important insight of the aid critics: trade is usually preferable to aid.

In other words, markets are irreplaceable in achieving certain goals, and humanitarian projects are important for others. Free trade won't automatically build schools, and building schools won't automatically create jobs.

The two can go hand in hand to create a better future.

Malawi's economy has deep roots in the small family farms that pepper its landscape. But farmers often can't earn enough from cash crops like tobacco, sugarcane, peanuts and tea.

The Clinton Hunter Development Initiative (CHDI) hoped to change this when they started working with rural Malawian farmers in 2006. As they explain on their website, they encouraged the farmers to grow soy instead of peanuts, which is more nutritious, gets better yields, and is easier to grow.

In one particularly impoverished district, CHDI also worked with a group of local farmers to build a large commercial soy farm. Collectively, the farmers could get a better deal by buying in bulk, which drove down the price of seeds, fertilizer and irrigation tools. CHDI also used the farm as an informal classroom, showing locals how the different cultivation techniques were used.

After only two full years in the country, CHDI reports that for many farmers, harvests have more than doubled under the new system, with income not far behind. One of these farmers shares her story in the video below.

In a country as poor as Malawi, where an estimated 53 percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day, that extra income provides farmers with many opportunities that had previously been out of reach.

Economist Glenn Hubbard argues that aid targeting local African business development would help the continent more than infrastructure projects like roads. Photo: Stefan Gara (flickr)

Foreign aid has failed to end poverty in Africa because it often funds the wrong kinds of projects, says economist Glenn Hubbard. As he explains in a recent podcast interview with NPR's PlanetMoney, Africa remains just as poor as it was 50 years ago, despite the $1 trillion in foreign aid that developed countries have spent since WWII.

How to fix this? Hubbard argues that funneling aid money directly to local businesses is the most effective way to promote growth and end poverty, an idea he expands on in his book The Aid Trap. He contends in an interview with Columbia University Press that Western governments could model such an initiative on the Marshall Plan, the foreign aid program that the United States used to rebuild Europe after WWII:

Everyone in aid recognizes the Marshall Plan as the most successful aid program in history. What few realize is how the Marshall Plan actually worked. It made loans to Europe’s private businesses, who repaid them to a national fund, which spent the money on commercial infrastructure like ports and roads.

Hubbard believes that this aid model can also be applied to Africa, since small-to-medium sized business are the engines of any economy. "There is a collective amnesia among prosperous countries about how they themselves rose from poverty: their local business sectors," he writes in an article for CNNMoney. By contrast, large multinationals doing business in Africa rarely impact local poverty levels.

"We can do [this plan] without spending new money," Hubbard says to PlanetMoney, explaining that he just wants to restructure how aid is given. He also believes that "we have a moral imperative to act" to end poverty through aid, in contrast to the prominent economist Dambisa Moyo, who argues that Africa would be better off without any aid at all (see Manasi Sharma's "Is Foreign Aid Helping or Hurting Africa?"). Hubbard tells Columbia University Press that not all aid money should go to business either, since humanitarian aid and microfinance programs are both successful and necessary for the poor.

Hubbard admits to the PlanetMoney team that the idea has some risks, such as the possibility that local elites could siphon off many of the benefits without improving the lives of the poor. However, he says that it's even easier for them to do so under the current system. "The traditional aid has definitely strengthened the elites," he explains.

Despite possible drawbacks, as Hubbard points out to PlanetMoney, it's clear that when one aid plan has already failed, we shouldn't try to duplicate it for another sixty years — we should move on to something new. And as he tells Columbia University Press, "It’s not that business hasn’t worked in poor countries, it’s that business never had a chance in poor countries. Let’s provide that chance."

Israel's ban on the import of building materials means that very little reconstruction has taken place since the 22-day Israeli offensive at the beginning of the year. Photo: Linda Mason for Mercy Corps

For the past several years, Gaza has suffered from a humanitarian crisis that waxes and wanes in severity, but never entirely disappears. This tiny patch of land on the Mediterranean Sea has one of the highest population densities in the world with over 4,000 people per square kilometer. On top of that, it suffers from a crushing poverty rate and high unemployment numbers that mean that 85 percent of the population is dependent on humanitarian aid.

The humanitarian situation is the result of an Israeli-imposed blockade that severely limits the flow of goods and people in and out. It's a part of what Palestinians see as a collective punishment for the actions of the Hamas-led government that took control there in June 2007. Hamas has also held an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in captivity since June 2006.

Gaza's crisis intensified at the end of last December when Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, a 22-day military offensive whose stated aim was to destroy Hamas's ability to launch rockets into southern Israel, and which resulted in the deaths of 13 Israelis and more than 1,300 Palestinians. A recent, controversial United Nations report assessing the war has accused both Hamas and Israel of war crimes.

Since the end of the offensive in January 2009, Israel has allowed some goods into Gaza — such as cooking oil and basic foodstuffs — but not lifted the blockade, so the crisis' underlying causes have not been alleviated. Mercy Corps' work in Gaza focuses on providing immediate humanitarian aid, helping alleviate unemployment through cash-for-work programs, and helping traumatized Gazans deal with their psychological scars.

Isdud al Najjar, Program Director for Mercy Corps in Gaza, recently spoke with me about the situation there.

Sarah Standish: Tell us about Mercy Corps' work in Gaza. What is your role?

Isdud al Najjar: Mercy Corps has worked in Gaza since September 2005. I was the first person hired there and I've been a program manager there since February 2006. We started with small scale emergency programs there in addition to the 'Why Not?' program [connecting youth in the U.S. and Gaza], and our programs have grown a lot since that time. We now have a huge Cash-for-Work program, where we provide short-term job opportunities for vulnerable male and female households as well as for new graduates.

We also have psychosocial programs focused on helping children deal with the trauma and stress they experience, as well as humanitarian and emergency assistance programs that respond to the harsh circumstances in which Palestinians are living.

Finally, we have new youth program called Global Citizen Corps, through which we're trying to promote the full participation of boys and girls in different aspects of life in order to create a shared vision of the future.

Sarah: The Israeli siege is the main cause of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but it's also caused a lot of subsidiary issues like environmental degradation, unemployment, a lack of higher education opportunities, failing businesses, scarce food supplies, and more. What do you think is the worst side-effect of the siege?

Isdud: The biggest problem the siege has caused is the rampant unemployment — about half the population is unemployed — which has had a huge impact on all aspects of life — sometimes in ways that will leave a mark on people long into the future. (The New York Times examined this issue in a recent article.)

Not only has unemployment lead to higher poverty rates, it's also associated with increases in domestic violence, which can have a negative psychological impact on children and their performance in school and at work. It's also related to a rise in school drop-out rates because some parents force their children to leave the education system in order to sell small items in the street. Additionally, we're seeing women and children out on the streets begging, which is a desperate last resort because it's considered so shameful — especially since Gaza is small and dense, and many people know each other. Some also try to marry their daughters off earlier in order to relieve themselves of that financial burden. When resources are scarce, parents always give priority to their male children, so in this kind of crisis it's women and children who pay the highest price.

Sarah: Can you tell us about the under-ground tunnels between Gaza and Egypt that are used to smuggle in goods prohibited under the Israeli blockade?

Isdud: There must be at least one thousand tunnels between Gaza and Rafah [in Egypt]. These tunnels have relieved the local market somewhat, and have definitely improved the economic situation of those who run them, but the prices of the goods smuggled through them are so high that they don't alleviate the average person's situation very much. The tunnels are a Hamas business. (Global Envision also wrote about the tunnels last winter.)

Sarah: Israel destroyed much of Gaza's infrastructure during the Dec-Jan offensive. Are rebuilding efforts under-way? Are homes being rebuilt?

Isdud: The offensive damaged or destroyed schools, water treatment facilities, public buildings, and houses, but very little has been restored because of the severe shortage of building materials. Israel doesn't allow any building materials into Gaza. There's a little bit of construction material coming through the tunnels, but it's so heavy that smugglers don't like to bring much through, and it's also too expensive for the majority of Palestinians to afford.

The lack of reconstruction means that many families are either living in buildings that are in poor condition, or staying with their relatives. As a result, there's even more overcrowding in existing buildings, and families have been split up — parents often have to send a few children to live with one set of relatives, a few others to live with another set.

Gazans follow the news closely, hoping to hear good news about their situation. In particular, they want to know what will happen with the kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. People think that everything bad that happened to Gaza recently was revenge for the kidnapping, and they hope that if an agreement is reached on his release, the siege will be lifted.

Sarah: How has the blockade affected daily life and Mercy Corps' programs in Gaza?

Isdud: The siege has caused severe poverty and deprivation: 80 percent of Gazans now live under the poverty line, and 70 percent live in a state of deep poverty, which means that they're unable to cover the cost of their basic needs like food, health care, and electricity. Mercy Corps provides some food assistance and non-food items like water tanks, as well as medical supplies for people with disabilities. It's difficult to determine who should receive this aid since the number of people in severe need of this assistance has increased dramatically. For example, we receive thousands of applications for our cash-for-work program, but we can only help 6000-8000 people. The challenge for us is how to successfully target the poorest of the poor.

For a period, there were also severe electricity shortages [after Israel began cutting Gaza's power supply in retaliation for Hamas's rocket attacks in October 2007] that affected Mercy Corps' ability to run its programs smoothly. Sometimes, we experienced up to ten hours of power outages at a time. We have a cash-for-work program employing women who sew school uniforms, but they couldn't use their sewing machines without power, so jobs that should have been finished in twenty days sometimes took up to a month and a half. We also employed women to bake pastries that were provided as snacks to pre-schoolers, but the same thing happened: They were unable to run their electric ovens when the electricity was cut off, just as our psychosocial programs were negatively affected when there wasn't enough light in the rooms we were using to see by. Even worse, the electricity outages also meant that buildings would run out of clean water. Luckily, Mercy Corps has a generator at our office, but it didn't always have enough power to compensate for the cuts.

There was also a period in Gaza in which there was hardly any fuel. Taxis were idle, and their drivers sat at home. People were cooking over wood fires for lack of gas. Luckily, fuel is now usually able to pass into Gaza normally, so the energy situation has improved a little.

However, the siege has also caused a severe materials scarcity that hasn't abated, so we've had to be creative and re-plan some Mercy Corps programs according to what's available to us. We had planned to help reconstruct the offices of some local NGOs and rebuild a public park, but this turned out to be impossible because of the lack of building materials. Instead, we had to focus on programs that rely more on the availability of labor than materials. For instance, we employ people to help fishermen maintain their nets, and we've started a cash-for-work program that pays unemployed laborers to work on farms; that way, the program provides some people with employment, as well as helping the farmer by providing him with free labor that keeps the farmer from pulling his children out of school to do this work.

Sarah: Tell us more about Mercy Corps' psycho-social programs.

Isdud: Our programs are designed to help children who've been negatively affected by the stress of daily life and the traumatic experiences they've undergone. The program targets moderately traumatized children along with their parents and teachers, and we deliver psycho-social guided sessions using different techniques based on professional manuals, like the CABAC [Children Affected by Armed Conflict] manual, designed to help children living in conflict zones. We try to take a comprehensive approach by giving different workshops to the teachers and parents of the kids, mainly on how to deal with depressed and traumatized children, and we tell them about the importance of providing down time for their children and encouraging them to play. The program also offers some remedial classes for children whose school performance has been affected by their psychological problems. This program has been a great help to many of the Gazan children who are suffering from this overwhelming situation.

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.