In 1994, on his second trip to the United States, Derreck Kayongo was staying at a Philadelphia hotel when he noticed that every bar of soap he’d use in the morning was replaced magically with a new one by the time he returned that evening. “I asked the concierge what they did with the partially used bars, and he actually told me they threw them away!” Though Kayongo grew up in a well-to-do family — his father, in fact, owned a soap factory in Uganda — the 42-year-old Ugandan native ended up living as a refugee with his family in Kenya after Idi Amin came to power. “That was the ... Read More
Humanitarian Aid: Moving the Dialogue Toward Prevention
April 3, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
This past year, as with the years before, the international news has been replete with stories of humanitarian disasters. War, drought, flood, earthquake, disease — there are constantly populations in crisis, constantly people for whom the difference between life and death lies in the response of the outside world. Perhaps it has always been this way. One thing that has changed, however, is who is doing the responding. Where disaster relief had once been overwhelmingly funded and provided by nations, increasingly we have seen that response to humanitarian disasters has been coming from ... Read More
One Laptop Per Child Redux
December 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The New York Times called it, “The Laptop That Will Save the World,” while the renowned Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University referred to it as “a monumental feat of engineering and design.” Dressed up like a toy in a Kermit-the-Frog green and white plastic shell, this durable little computer was the progeny of the nonprofit organization, One Laptop Per Child. When the laptops went into mass production in November 2007, OLPC’s ambitious plan aimed to place a free computer into the hands of the world's 1 billion impoverished children. Education is the exit ramp ... Read More
Foreign Aid for a Frugal Age
February 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
As they prepared to take control of the House of Representatives, congressional Republicans were also getting ready to take on foreign aid — with a scalpel or a meat-ax, depending on how one parsed words. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, conservative South Florida Republican and incoming House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, told Agence France-Presse she wants "to cut the U.S. State Department and foreign aid budgets and use U.S. contributions to force reforms in multilateral organizations like the United Nations." And Foreign Policy magazine suggested that Rep. Kay Granger — a Texan who is ... Read More
Microfinance: Back to the Drawing Board
July 18, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Yohane Mdeme owns a food market in Tanzania. Though poor and with little to no collateral, he applied for a loan of $850 through Kiva.org to expand his small business. Twenty years ago in such a place and for such a client, Mdeme would never obtain the capital to increase his business. No bank would have given out such a small loan, much less to a person without collateral. Yet Mdeme is well on his way to receiving his requested amount in full. This process, called microfinance, has been put on a pedestal by development economists thanks to its high repayment rates and ability to provide ... Read More
The Poisonous Proceeds of Penny-Pinching
May 19, 2010 • By • 5 Comments
Is stinginess harmful to your health? Newly published research suggests the answer may be yes — if your tightwad tendencies arouse feelings of shame. Writing in the Journal of Health Psychology, a research team led by University of British Columbia psychologist Elizabeth Dunn describes an experiment in which 50 students were given an opportunity to be generous. Specifically, each received 10 one-dollar coins as compensation for their participation. They were then given the option of donating some or all of this payment to a randomly selected classmate who was not involved in the ... Read More
Continental’s Charitable Donations May Be In Departure Lounge
May 11, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
A recent Nick Anderson cartoon in the Houston Chronicle highlights the city’s concerns about the proposed United-Continental merger, which would relocate Continental’s headquarters to Chicago. Houston, which has been the airline’s home since 1982, fears the merger means a loss of jobs, prestige — and charitable contributions. Research outlined in a previous Miller-McCune.com article suggests this concern is well founded. Corporate headquarters do increase charitable donations in a city, not necessarily because the corporations themselves donate more, but because they employ and ... Read More
Letting Your Good Intentions Backfill My Budget
November 6, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Donors in the world's richest nations send tens of billions in aid to developing countries every year, and it's no secret that corruption and malfeasance hinder those efforts. But there's another, less well-known predicament that affects aid to poor nations: fungibility. Instead of supplementing the money that a government spends for a particular purpose — like fighting HIV/AIDS — donor dollars may just replace local outlays. Donations intended to boost the amount of money devoted to a worthy cause might actually reduce it. Development economists and experts disagree on how common ... Read More
