Women in Kenya drag jerry cans of water 4 kilometers through a parched landscape. Photo by Erin Gray/Mercy Corps.

How bad is the drought and famine in East Africa? Climate scientist Simon Mason elaborates in this video interview. Comparing East Africa’s situation to other drought situations, Mason highlights the dramatic impacts in a region receiving 5 to 25% of its usual expected rainfall.

With the world facing more and more severe climate-related disruptions, Mason explains some ways in which weather forecasting is being used to help humanitarian aid organizations prepare responses in the short and long term. Check out his interview here.

Village savings and loan schemes help the poor save in remote communities like this one in Malawi. Photo: Erik Mandell for MercyCorps

The world's poorest have long struggled to borrow. Now, an alternative microfinance model is also making it easier for poor people to save.

Microfinance institutions have provided lending services to millions of the world’s poor people for several decades. But loans must be paid back, and even traditional microlenders are hesitant to lend money to the poorest of the poor—including those living in some of the most remote and unpopulated communities. That’s where the model of village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) comes in, according to a recent Economist article.

The idea is simple: savings, rather than just borrowed money, is key to helping poor people become more stable and less vulnerable. Differing from the better-known Grameen Bank model of microfinance, which provides individual or group loans and operates on credit, a village savings and loan scheme allows a group of community members to pool their savings, lend within the group, and save the interest earned from the loans to disperse to members individually or use for community projects.

This model enables both borrowing capabilities and longer-term savings accumulation for both the group and its members.

CARE International, a humanitarian aid organization focused on fighting poverty, engineered the VSLA model in Niger in 1991. Today, CARE oversees village savings and loan associations in Ghana, Malawi and Uganda. Numerous other non-governmental organizations have promoted village savings groups that serve more than 4.6 million members in 54 countries.

While nonprofits promote the model, the groups themselves are internally managed. Unlike solely credit-based models, group members do not owe repayment to an external bank, but rather to their own pool. Group constitutions are established by members, outlining rules, interest rates, and how savings and interest will be shared. Sometimes transactions, debts and credits are written in basic ledgers, but some groups with no literate members rely on memorization, familiar to those with a culture of oral history, according to Hugh Allen, founder of VSL Associates.

Amid criticism of the effectiveness of traditional microfinance models, as we reported a few months ago, VSLA schemes offer a different path to poverty alleviation.

And for some of the world’s poorest, savings—not a loan— is the golden ticket needed for a better life.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

The departure of skilled workers in the developing world may, contrary to popular belief, do more good than harm. Photo:banoiff (flickr)

When educated professionals depart a developing nation, does greater wealth arrive? Some scholars in the international development community are saying farewell to the notion that the ‘brain drain’ hinders impoverished countries from expanding human capital and increasing the growth rate.

Exit brain drain. Enter brain gain.

The brain drain has long been perceived as a constraint on the progress of developing nations—much-needed doctors, professors, and scientists often abandon their homelands in exchange for better salaries and more comfortable lives in the developed world. However, research indicates that if countries can hit a sweet spot of sending around 20 percent of their talent to other countries, the residual impact of those individual losses will actually spur economic and educational growth at home.

But how? One way is through remittances, cash transfers from an individual in one country to another elsewhere. Take Ghana, for example. Some figures place remittance levels at $400 million per year, on par with the country's two biggest exports, cocoa and gold, which account for 25 percent of the foreign exchange earnings of the nation. To put this figure in perspective, in previous years Ghana has received around $650 million in foreign aid. Compared to other developing nations, that's low—in some, “remittances are more than double the amount of foreign aid,” as reported by Foreign Policy.

Furthermore, remittances can withstand the tests of natural disasters, and political and economic crises. Chances are an economic and political collapse in Egypt would deter foreign investment but encourage a migrant to increase his or her monetary givings to Egyptian relatives. Now those are derivatives Fannie and Freddie should have bet on.

Much of the new economic activity happening in African countries like Ghana are catalyzed by residents who have traveled or lived in developed countries. New York University professor William Easterly refers to this as “brain circulation,” that is, the movement of ideas and investments from educated professionals between their homes and the West.

Often, brain drainers will eventually return to their country of origin or maintain residency both abroad and at home. Not only do these individuals in turn support the economic development of their hometowns, but they also inspire members of the community to invest in education. According to Easterly, most students are motivated by the idea of living abroad, noting that “if this prospect is closed tightly, this may have an effect on the effort levels of students in the system, and therefore the quality of the graduates of the school system.”

Additionally, travel expands capital horizons. Robert Guest notes in Foreign Policy that “countries trade more with countries from which they have received immigrants.” A migrant living in the UK might inform his sister in Somalia that there is demand in his city for a specific talent she may have the skill sets to provide. Diaspora thus encourages a fluidity of ideas, innovations, and supplies and demands between often disconnected parts of the world.

Investing money abroad can be the best way to bring more of it home. Brainpower may work that way, too.

The use of technology in humanitarian aid planning is on the rise. Photo: Esther Gibbons (Flicker)

2011 is over, but the impact technology had on humanitarian aid planning last year could be just beginning to emerge.

Humanitarian issues demand immediate solutions. In 2011, a lot of solutions to crises placed heavy emphasis on technology. Here are three notable examples:

Disaster prone Bangladesh turned to GPS to provide early weather warnings to fishermen.

Airtel, a private mobile operator in Bangladesh will provide early weather warnings to fishermen using its global positioning system via cell phones in partnership with the Center for Global Change, the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and two international NGOs, according to IRIN.

More than half on Bangladesh’s population uses mobile phones. Early weather warnings could prove to be a life-saving tool. "75 percent of the country’s population lives in rural, disaster-prone areas, an ideal environment in which to exploit the potential of mobile phones to mitigate disasters," IRIN reported.

Technology has helped put Kibera on the map, literally.

Finding Kibera, a district of Nairobi, on a map before 2009 was not an easy task because it wasn’t on one. The location of schools, medical facilities, water points and other basic information was simply not available. As a result, The Map Kibera Project was created in order to provide this information. The goal: to train nine Kibera residents in using GPS devices to gather geographical information in a "citizen mapping" project.

Now this information is available on OpenStreetMap, a global map anyone can view and edit. Organizers plan to continue adding information on the map and eventually start mapping other communities.

Mobile phones have turned ordinary people into extraordinary philanthropists.

This past year, one of the worst famines in modern history struck the Horn of Africa. Humanitarian aid and donor government assistance poured in from all over the world. One campaign, "Kenyans for Kenya," set a goal to raise $5.28 million dollars in one month. Within 10 days, the goal was met and a bigger goal of $10.56 million set. By September 1, more than $7 million was collected, $1.6 million through private donations.
Contributions, most of them from Kenyan citizens and organizations, were made through a mobile phone money transfer service operated by telecom firm Safaricom. The money collected has been used to send money to affected areas through the Kenyan Red Cross Society, IRIN reports. This has been one of the most successful humanitarian fundraising campaigns Kenya has ever seen, and its efforts are ongoing.

These are only a few examples of how technology has positively impacted humanitarian responses to crises. Technology isn’t the answer to all the world’s problems, but it’s proving to be an effective tool.

Reliance on quality produce from Africa prompted Albert Heijn to undertake aid projects. Photo: Erik Mandell for MercyCorps

A Dutch company looks to combine international aid with corporate profit, according to allAfrica.com.

The supermarket chain Albert Heijn is funding and conducting development projects in Africa, including constructing water systems in Ghana, farmer training programs in South Africa, and expanded schooling in Kenya. But the company doesn’t claim that its efforts are based in charity. "It's very much business-driven. It bears almost no resemblance to charity or good causes," says Henri Zondag, chair of the Albert Heijn foundation.

Albert Heijn supermarkets rely heavily on quality produce from Africa, and the idea is that healthier, happier and better-educated suppliers make trade relationships more productive. The Dutch government is a player in this arrangement too, encouraging business-sector participation in cooperative development relationships and economic benefits for the Netherlands. The government hopes that “making a profit can be a great incentive for [development] projects.” The company envisions projects that forge partnerships that lead to greater profit. If both are correct, in the long term all parties involved could win.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Critics say developed countries have broken promises for international aid. Photo: UK Department for International Development (flickr)

With cause for concern about the future of international aid amid the financial crisis faced by rich countries, some developing nations find microfinance playing an increasing role in fueling local growth.

At last week's 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, powerful advocates including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pressed for continued financial assistance from rich countries and better transparency for aid programs, according to the Washington Post.

But is "continued assistance" enough? Is it the kind of assistance that will lead to actual change? The European head of Oxfam International says the EU failed to take a leadership role at the summit, despite previous promises of aid allocation. Natalia Alonso says “donors are not on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals. In 2000, all rich countries recommitted to spend 0.7 percent of their national income as overseas aid by 2015, but a number of EU governments, such as Italy and Germany, are pretty far from this.” Oxfam found that amid the economic crisis, EU overall aid last year was just 0.43 percent of income, leaving a $65 billion shortfall to 56 poor countries.

It may signal more trouble for traditional international aid, the flow of cash or food aid transfers from richer to poorer countries. The economic crisis and criticisms of the summit leave the trajectory of aid in question.

As the world's wealth shifts to developing nations, some Western leaders want to be sure their aid is paying off. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece that “leaders of emerging economies must ensure that they are able to attract high-quality, sustainable investment.”

World Bank president Robert B. Zoellick also points to this shifting paradigm, stating that “the time has come to envision a world “beyond aid” – a world where the shift is from the paradigm of charity to one of mutual economic benefit.”

One way in which some developing countries are expanding local markets in the era of questionable international aid is through successful microfinance programs. While the long-term solvency of some forms of microfinance are in question, other examples point to successes engineered by both developing countries’ governments and private local banks.

Government funded cash-transfer programs in Mexico and Brazil have been recognized as quite effective at reducing poverty and spurring local market growth, The New York Times reports. These programs provide small infusions of capital to low-income residents for both entrepreneurial and cost-of-living expenses, feeding local economies. Indonesia’s state-owned Bank Rakyat has successfully demonstrated similar results in recent years through a mixed savings-credit model, according to Elisabeth Rhyne in her article, “Five countries where microfinance works,” for China Daily.

Rhyne also highlights Bolivia’s BancoSol, a for-profit bank dedicated to serving the poor that operates within a strict regulatory framework. Competition among similarly modeled microfinance banks has spurred growth with low interest rates in Bolivia. Cambodia and Mongolia are two countries where replication of the Bolivia model has allowed microfinance banks to be “market leaders and innovators,” according to Rhyne.

In Columbia, where 96 percent of businesses are small, demand for microfinance has grown fast in the years of the global financial crisis, according to IPS news. Microfinance in Columbia “grew at a steady rate of 15 percent between 2007 and 2010," states a Visión Económica study. Small companies fuel demand for microfinance because "they generally do not meet the requirements set by commercial banks,” Jorge Varón, the manager of the development credit fund of the Colombians Supporting Colombians (CAC) programme, told IPS. And in a country with so many small businesses fueling market growth, this is a divergent route from typical aid pathways.

The financial crisis hasn't killed international aid. But it has people talking about what's next. Microfinance looks like a big part of the answer.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Aid can restore dignity by providing choices. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

Food aid can fill bellies, but countries hit by famine need choices, not handouts. Two new alternatives can solve longer-term problems by letting victims choose how aid gets used.

First, cash voucher programs give people choice.

UNICEF and two of its non-governmental partners implemented cash voucher fairs in 2010 that provided crucial supplies to 65,000 people displaced by violence in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Each family received 13 coupons totaling $40, which they used to purchase supplies from participating vendors.

Cash vouchers let people decide what they need, as opposed to receiving standard packages with items they might not. Having the power of choice also restores dignity and a sense of worth in a time of struggle. “Furaha!" a mother of two, Kavira Matita, exclaimed to UNICEF during a cash voucher fair, expressing joy in the Kiswahili language. "I am able to choose what is close to my heart. I am very happy to use the coupons for what I know my family needs and not be given things I won’t have much use for.” That's not all: Economically speaking, the vouchers tend to support local business rather than international ones, which can inject much-needed capital back into a struggling community and increase the impact of aid dollars.

Cash-for-work programs are another option. They hire people to participate in their own rebuilding process.

In landlocked Chad, which borders Sudan, World Concern’s cash-for-work program is already putting communities to work. One of the first projects was to dig large ponds for catching water for irrigation and animals. Other projects built low rock walls to reduce erosion on hillsides.

As in cash voucher programs, cash-for-work participants receive vouchers as payment so they can buy what their family needs. However, injecting new money into a weak economy can cause inflation. To prevent this, World Concern sets price ceilings beforehand to ensure economies aren't further destabilized.

In previous posts, Global Envision dug into cash-for-work and cash voucher programs, highlighting responses to the Haiti earthquake -- a Mercy Corps cash-for-work project, and a World Food Program cash voucher system.

Worldwide, 40 countries face food shortages, and aid delivery to these regions in crises is vital. Each country has unique needs, and they should be evaluated accordingly. As a result of the famine in the Horn of Africa, three million people in Somalia need emergency aid and more than 10 million are at risk of severe prolonged hunger or even starvation, according to The New York Times.

As the world looks for ways to deliver this aid, it should consider cash vouchers and cash-for-work programs. Both make recovery after crises and conflicts more sustainable by directly involving those affected in rebuilding their communities.

Check out what over five years of Kiva microlending looks like:

The video was put together by Kiva’s staff, who cleverly termed it “Intercontinental Ballistic Finance.” It’s pretty neat to see how microfinance can cross geographical and political borders to connect far-flung parts of the globe.

As time passes, you see that more and more parts of the world join in the lending game. And it’s not just the Western world; loans come from cities all over, including Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai. You can also see through the nifty color-coding system that the types of loans come in waves: the screen flashes blue, red, and sometimes it’s a multicolored hodgepodge.

Kiva Microfunds is an American non-profit organization that allows anyone to make microloans to entrepreneurs around the world. The loans are then repaid over time. Since its launch in 2005, Kiva has loaned $241,348,975 to 625,153 people in 60 countries, and its repayment rate is 98.86 percent, and The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof included the organization in a 2010 list of the best ways that individuals can make a difference in the world.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

Community members in Indonesia were asked to rank their own need, resulting in much higher satisfaction in aid programs. Photo: CIFOR (flickr)

Sometimes social scientists measure wealth and poverty by earnings; other times by assets. But the truth is, most people use a much simpler approach. They compare themselves to their neighbors.

It’s the idea of "keeping up with the Joneses"—the perception that to see where you stand in society, you look next door. Turns out this might be good social science, too. A recent MIT research group studying aid distribution found that neighbors comparing and ranking their own wealth relative to others in the community is really the best determinant of who has the most, and who has the most need.

By involving communities rather than relying on empirical calculations of wealth and poverty, the researchers found that aid programs were able to target those who truly had the most need. Neighbors are able to see the complexities of things like illness, single motherhood, earning potential and education level that simple asset calculations can’t account for, Fast Company reported. They also have a better idea of the type of informal work others in the community may do to make ends meet, and thus are better able to see who needs the most assistance rather than simply who fits the textbook definition of poverty.

Asking beneficiaries who's in need has another, perhaps even more important benefit. It increases satisfaction and participation in aid programs, making them more useful to exactly the people who need them.

The lesson, it seems, is easy enough. To determine who in a community should receive aid … just ask.

The Invisible Problem. Photo: carl.jones (flickr)

The world is facing a "global human rights emergency in mental health," says the World Health Organization (WHO) via the Guardian. It's a quiet crisis keeping millions out of the global marketplace.

Mental health problems (including autism, substance abuse, schizophrenia, depression, dementia) account for an estimated 14 percent of all global health conditions, yet receive less than 1 percent of most countries' health-care budget, according to the Guardian. Overall, the WHO estimates a 75 percent coverage gap in many countries with low and lower-middle incomes. One-third of all countries lack a mental health program, and only one of 10,000 UK charities listed on GuideStar is dedicated to international mental health.

Saudi Ali Mufreh exemplifies the problem, having lived in chains for 35 years since developing mental problems at age 15. Ali spends his days alone, hearing little more than the sound of “his clanking iron restraints,” says Al-Riyadh. Ali's brother Omar explained:

I was forced to chain my brother in this small room to protect him and protect others from him. I am searching for a cure to his condition, but I have had no luck yet. If I let my brother go, then he will place the whole family in danger. On two occasions, he tried to burn down the house. Both times we escaped, but the whole house was severely damaged.

Ali is not alone. Dr. Irmansyah, Indonesia's director of mental health services, estimates that 30,000 mentally ill people are restrained in cages, stocks or chains. Some suffering from mental illness are deposited at camps like Indonesia's Yayasan Galuh, where patients live on a hard tile surface surrounded by open sewers, according to PBS NewsHour.

In addition to violating basic human rights, the isolation of those with mental illness also creates an economic burden on developing countries, says the Guardian.

Mental illness adversely affects people's ability to work, creates a potential career burden on their families and generally leads to greater poverty.

But, there's hope.

In 2008, the WHO launched the Mental Health Gap Action Program to improve conditions for the mentally ill, primarily in developing countries. The WHO asserts that “with proper care, psychosocial assistance and medication, tens of millions could be treated for depression, schizophrenia, and epilepsy, prevented from suicide and begin to lead normal lives&emdash;even where resources are scarce.”

Four critical areas for emphasis going forward include:

• Reaching people in the countryside: Many of the developing world's mentally ill live in the countryside, and what few treatment services that exist are likely far away in the capital cities. Large numbers of non-specialist field health workers could be trained in basic mental health care and drug distribution, serving as a first line for treatment and as a conduit for passing more serious cases onto city hospitals.
• Changing Public Awareness and Perceptions: The mentally ill are often hidden from society due to the social stigma and marginalized, so it is little surprise they receive minimal help. The U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals make no mention of mental disabilities, and discussion of mental health is often considered "something of a luxury" among policymakers and the media. Making the topic visible and less stigmatized encourages donations, research and advocacy.
• Preventing illness before it develops: Aiding malnourished or overworked mothers and their newborns is a critical step to preventing mental illness in the first place. According to one WHO report,“improving nutrition and development in disadvantaged children can lead to healthy cognitive development, improved educational outcomes, and reduced risk for mental ill health."
• Seeing the mentally ill as potential workers: In one study from India, the onset of mental illness reduced working hours by 64 percent (from 28 to 10) — not including increased family care — suggesting major economic benefits accruing to countries who get the mentally ill treated and back to work. In other words, there may be only one aid program a family like Ali’s needs: treatment for Ali himself.

Developing countries and NGO's will eventually realize the advantages of treating the mentally ill. However, changing the way the general population perceives the mentally ill may be just as difficult as treating the mentally ill themselves.

Lionel Messi, considered the world's top football player at the moment, takes aim at more than just the back of the net. Photo: prettyfriendship (flickr)

Many of us dream of bending it like Beckham. But star-quality soccer — football, to most of its 250 million players worldwide — is almost impossible without a healthy childhood.

That's why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with an assist from the 2011 UEFA Champions League victors FC Barcelona, is teaming up to draw attention to the importance that vaccines hold for the world's future football stars. They're taking aim at polio in particular, seeing the potential to eradicate the disease completely.

With millions of fans worldwide, FC Barcelona has the ability to reach global masses. There is benefit for FC Barcelona as well. In partnering with the Gates Foundation, FC Barcelona is capturing the hearts of a whole new market and adding a social edge to their organization.

Polio is an infectious viral disease, spread from human to human. The disease attacks the central nervous system, resulting in severe paralysis and disability or death. But the vaccine, which costs about 13 cents a dose, protects children from this devastating disease and keeps them in school and in the workforce.

The effects of polio are not only damaging for the individual, but for poor families and countries as well. Caring for polio-stricken family members taps already limited resources, and polio victims struggle to work and effectively contribute monetarily. As children have had access to the vaccine “cases of this devastating disease have fallen by 99 percent in the past 20 years,” according to the Gates Foundation.

If the vaccination of at-risk children can continue, the potential for complete elimination is in sight. But to reach this goal, so that every child has the chance to score, the fight must continue. And as the Gates Foundation says, “polio anywhere is a threat everywhere."

Is cold, hard cash more or less helpful to those in need than conditional aid? Photo: jtyerse (flickr)

Economics is about choices. What I spend money on is what I value most, because it comes at the cost of something else. People are rational, and thus make rational decisions—right?

This is the premise, says NPR, behind a new charity called GiveDirectly, which has removed the conditions from the money it gives its beneficiaries. While most charities and NGOs provide financial assistance, they do so by specifying what the money can be used for. GiveDirectly runs on the assumption that, given money through mobile banking, people will prioritize for themselves where that cash is most needed — and spend it accordingly, whether that be children’s education, health care or business startup costs.

And yet the economic principle of "rational" decision-making is oversimplified. People of every income bracket do not always spend money in the ways that would most benefit their families. According to a study on the spending habits of the poor, families that earn less than $2 a day in the average country studied spent 2 percent of their income on education, with about 5 to 7 percent going toward alcohol, tobacco, festivals and other entertainment. Spending patterns for the average American, according to a 2008 US Department of Labor study, are almost identical.

GiveDirectly is still in early stages, and is conducting a study of its own to see how its money will be spent under real life conditions. Unconditional aid undoubtedly shows a higher level of respect for beneficiaries' decision-making, and there is reason to hope it succeeds. Giving money without condition lowers administrative costs because it requires no follow up, meaning that a higher percentage of every dollar donated goes directly to those who need it.

But if a lack of conditions means a choice to spend more money at the local bar, not to put more children through school, GiveDirectly may be, at best, ineffective.

Correction: Aug. 16, 2011

A previous version of this post misstated the amount of money an MIT study found poor families spending on tobacco and alcohol.

With new border policies, humanitarian aid cargo may finally be allowed into Gaza. Photo: Peter Casier (flickr)

Derar Mohamed, our blogger from Gaza, writes on the economic and social issues facing the Middle East today.

Gaza is a 139-square-mile area of land, according to the CIA World Factbook, with a population density reaching one of the highest in the world—12,000 people per square mile. This big society's needs are growing constantly while all six Israeli borders and the seventh Egyptian border that link it to life have remained closed. However, toward the end of last May, the Egyptian authorities decided to re-open the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip to partially ease the blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza since 2006.

From an economic, social, and political point of view, the opening of the border will improve access to many essential needs for Gazan people. Gazans, including scholarship holders seeking higher education, contractors with jobs outside of Gaza and patients looking for better treatment options, would finally be able to fulfill their right of traveling freely to the outside world without feeling trapped just because of where they live.

Second, the opening would make it easier to bring the necessary raw construction materials that would allow for reconstruction from some serious understructure and infrastructure damages after the Israeli assault in 2009.

Finally, as the strip is mostly dependent on the “often-closed” Israeli borders to bring in decent goods and aid, Gazans have been forced to depend on smuggling goods through tunnels. This dangerous job has taken the lives of hundreds of Palestinians who suffer from unemployment. The opening of the crossing would partially solve this issue by increasing the amount and safety of commercial exchange being processed through the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Many political reactions followed the re-opening of the border. Nabil al Arabi, former Egyptian interim foreign minister and the new Arab League Secretary-General, has declared that closing the Rafah border under the Mubarak regime was "disgraceful," while Israel has described the re-opening of the border as a "national failure." I can still remember the humiliation I faced along with many other Palestinians on the border; I cannot imagine how giving people parts of their lost dignity and basic human rights back can be considered as a "national failure."

The hours I waited on the Palestinian side of the border cannot be easily wiped away from my memory. I made it through, though tens of ill people, businessmen and students were rejected.

While the border is officially opened again, it has been closed several times, according to a report done by Democracy Now. Egypt claims that there has been some necessary repair work; Palestinians claim that Egypt is being exposed to international pressures to withdraw its decision of re-opening the border.

As the border opens and closes, Palestinians in Gaza are looking forward to seeing and connecting with the outside world; to bring Gaza to the world, and to bring the world to Gaza.

In post-earthquake Haiti, members of the Bohoc community rehabilitate and widen a road. Photo: Lisa Hoashi/Mercy Corps.

In minutes, everything was gone.

The funnel clouds from one of the United States’ worst tornado seasons in years destroyed homes, bridges, schools, and anything else in their path. While the loss is catastrophic, the reconstruction period that follows a natural disaster can create interesting economic niches and opportunities for those seeking to put the pieces back together.

This kind of destruction is not unique to the U.S. Catastrophes around the globe cause economic shifts. Sometimes this means a transformation in a country’s economic structure, but on occasion, disaster can spark positive changes.

In an example of structural transformation, massive winter flooding in Colombia recently put millions of acres of land underwater — having disastrous effects on the country’s dairy, agricultural, and cut flower industries. Colombia had planned to transform its eastern plains into the country’s primary agricultural sector, doubling the amount of land under cultivation, but the flooding presented a major roadblock. “...[I]n just a few hours we are losing what has been 35 years in the making,” one dairy farmer told Reuters.

Last year’s floods in Pakistan, the earthquake in Haiti, and Hurricane Katrina (to name a few) disrupted millions of lives and wiped out or severely destroyed local and national economies. Recovery may take decades.

But disasters have also spurred interesting new economic developments. The floods in Pakistan washed away thousands of miles of roads and railway lines, many bridges, almost 10,000 schools, and 1.7 million houses. Rebuilding them represents an enormous business opportunity. It is also a chance to introduce more resource-efficient practices in industries like agriculture, livestock, and dairy farming that were wiped out by the floods, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Haman, told Reuters.

Indeed, the destruction of infrastructure and existing institutions sometimes represents an opportunity to rebuild in new and improved ways. In March 2010, the Haitian government unveiled a plan to rebuild the nation that seeks to redistribute a large portion of the population to smaller, less disaster-prone cities, according to the New York Times. Building up the infrastructure in these smaller communities should create an economic incentive for people to stay. Planners hope that a decrease in Port-au-Prince’s population will help to alleviate many of the social problems related to overcrowding that it faced before the earthquake.

New Orleans experienced massive job loss following Hurricane Katrina, but by 2008 it had regained 99 percent of its pre-storm total thanks to thousands of new jobs in construction and government, says the New York Times. Some companies and nonprofits incorporated green building practices as part of the rebuilding process, according to the Christian Science Monitor. In fact, the New Orleans school system, which was in many ways failing before the hurricane, is ranked as the most reform friendly city for education by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, says the Christian Science Monitor. Test scores and graduation rates are both up. In some ways, the city is experiencing a rebirth.

A natural disaster is, of course, still a disaster. Even the best-laid reconstruction plans may never materialize. This is especially true in the developing world, where the wounds left by a disaster are more severe and take longer to heal. Scientists predict the world will experience more severe natural disasters in greater numbers in the coming century, says The Guardian. That means more floods, more hurricanes, and more tornadoes like the one that recently ripped through Joplin, Missouri. It also means that now, more than ever, we need to understand how to create positive economic change in a disaster's aftermath.

One room, packed with 1,000 bustling social entrepreneurs, is bound to muster innovative ideas to change the world. It’s the Ashoka Changemakers association that makes it possible.

Ashoka Changemakers is a global online community that aims to bring together innovators, journalists, investors and enthusiasts to solve some of the world’s toughest problems. It’s now one of the largest associations of social entrepreneurs.

On June 21-22, 1,000 Changemakers met in Versailles, France to exchange ideas and encourage each other’s projects. Ideas varied from parenting and youth empowerment programs to solar power projects. Roots of Empathy, which aims to build caring, peaceful and civil societies as well as Solar Aid which plans to deliver clean and renewable power to some of the poorest people in the world, were both on hand.

The leading Changemakers aim to help relieve some of the pressures of new social entrepreneurship with simple, but valid statements. "When things don’t turn out the way you’ve planned, it’s because there is a better solution waiting to be found," says Thorkil Sonne, founder of software-testing company Specialsterne.

Check out the video below for more tips on creating and running successful social enterprises from some of the leading Changemakers.