One of the hardest parts of instituting public health policies that will benefit the poor is knowing beforehand whether or not they will work. After all, donors don’t want to waste money on ineffective programs, and those in the developing world don’t want to be troubled by policies that don’t positively impact their lives.
What if there was a way to determine the effectiveness of a policy before executing it? The answer might just be a technique called randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
RCTs are economics techniques that have been around since the 1960s, used to test the effectiveness of different social programs and economic policies.
The premise is simple enough: institute a scaled-down version of your policy over a random area, and compare it to another randomly assigned control group that does not benefit from the policy. While not a novel idea, randomized controlled trials only gained notoriety relatively recently in 1997 in Mexico.
In the midst of an economic crisis, Mexican President Zedillo tasked economist Santiago Levy with devising a strategy to alleviate the burden on the poor. Traditionally, the Mexican government had subsidized the cost of food or basic services like electricity.
Instead, Levy introduced a system of cash incentives to families who met requirements such as ensuring school attendance and visiting health clinics. Because the program rolled out in stages, Levy was able to collect data on regions who had the program, and those who hadn’t yet implemented it, providing him with control groups.
The program, called PROGRESA, was highly successful, with visitation to health clinics 60 percent higher for impacted populations versus control groups. Levy was also able to measure improved health outcomes for children, with a rate of illness decreasing by 23 percent, and an 18 percent reduction in anemia.
His experiment began an era of testing and collecting data on social programs where previously policy-makers could only guess at their effectiveness.
Since then, RCTs have been used to test the effectiveness of a wide range of policies. They have become a favorite tool of development professionals but have perhaps seen the most use for public health programs. In 2000, there were only about 10 public health studies published using RCTs as the primary method of analysis, while by 2012 there were over 200.
Ann Mei Chang, executive director of the Global Development Lab for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), commented that RCTs are “front and center on a lot of people’s agenda.”
Explaining why RCTs have become so important to aid donors, she asks, “where do we get the biggest bang for our buck?” RCTs are designed precisely to answer that question.
In Haryana, India, RCTs are being used to test the effectiveness of an incentive-based health program. 70 local health clinics were authorized to distribute sugar and cooking oil to families whose children start and finish a round of immunizations.
The goal is to determine whether or not incentives can increase immunization rates in the poorest districts. If incentives are proven to work through the randomized controlled trials, the government can begin to scale up the program to cover the entire state, if necessary.
However, not everyone wants to board the RCT train. Critics of the technique say that focusing on small metrics of success, such as whether or not incentives in-kind work to improve public health outcomes, detracts from the larger macroeconomic picture.
For example, while the results of the Haryana study seem to indicate that incentives improve vaccination rates, variables such as availability of medical personnel and supplies, geographic disease burdens, and income inequality would tend to confound the results.
Supposedly the fact that the trials are randomly assigned would control for these variables, but macroeconomists tend to disagree, preferring “Big Push” solutions to development issues.
As Princeton economist Angus Deaton puts it, “development is ultimately about politics,” meaning that the RCTs can only evaluate individual programs, rather than wider trends such as corruption, trade, infrastructure, etc.
RCTs aren’t the only evaluative technique for public health programs; randomization isn’t always desirable or necessary, and in a health crisis, preliminary testing takes too much time.
However, RCTs do represent a valuable tool for developing countries and aid donors alike to measure the efficacy of incentive-based programs and health policies. When it comes to public health, every dollar counts, and knowing policies work before scaling them up ensures that aid resources are used as effectively as possible.
– Derek Marion
Sources: Nature, The Economist
Photo: Wikimedia
Teachers Needed to Improve Global Education
According to the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), by 2015 an additional 5.3 million teachers are needed to meet the needs of global education and children around the world. But teacher shortages present an ongoing challenge. Worldwide, 1.6 million new teachers are needed to meet the demand, and 3.7 million more are needed to replace those who are retiring or changing career professions, hence, there has been an increase in teaching jobs abroad.
In developing countries, the average student to teacher ratio is very high, which increases the difficulty of the educator’s role. The GPE reports an average of 43 students per teacher. In addition, in many countries, teachers themselves have a low level of education and poor pre-service training, which leads to low outcomes for students in basic literacy and math skills.
Through partnerships, the GPE has committed to improving the effectiveness of teaching at the primary and secondary levels, improving employment terms and conditions for teachers, and engaging teacher organizations in education sector planning.
The GPE is not alone in helping improve global education worldwide. In September, Sony Global Education, Inc. partnered with the world’s leading global education network Edmodo to make Sony’s Global Math Challenge, an online math competition, accessible to teachers and students in over 190 countries.
“The world of education is constantly evolving, and we are thrilled to be working with Edmodo, a company that has made huge strides in offering innovative solutions to help teachers connect to their students, parents and administrators,” said Masaaki Isozu, President of Sony Global Education.
With a continued focus on global education, more students in developing countries can have the opportunity to attend universities and gain professional skills to work in the global marketplace.
– Alexandra Korman
Sources: Global Partnership, Market Watch, Newsweek
Photo: Go Banking
NCDs 101: How Do We Solve This Growing Problem?
The devastating effects of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) can be seen all around the globe. NCDs are responsible for the majority of deaths in developing countries, and they are not receiving the attention they need in order to be stopped.
NCDs are diseases that cannot be passed from person to person. Also known as chronic diseases, they last a long time and progress slowly. The four main types of NCDs are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes. They can affect anyone of any age, gender, ethnicity, location or income.
However, the distribution of NCDs is not so equally spread. 80 percent of deaths caused by NCDs occur in low and middle-income countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
As well as being concentrated in areas of poverty, NCDs have a large global impact. Sixty-eight percent of global deaths in 2012 were due to NCDs, and 42 percent were premature (before the age of 70) and avoidable, the WHO reports.
The combination of the prevalence of these diseases with the location (countries that are unable to help themselves), means that this problem is quickly growing out of control. Disease-specific solutions are being administered (vaccinations for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria) in lieu of improving conditions so that NCDs are not even given a chance to affect a population.
Of course, vaccinations for communicable diseases are necessary as well, but they cannot be the sole solution in working toward better health. NCDs are proving to be more of a problem globally than other diseases, and, as such, the health conditions in suffering countries need our attention.
It is a fact that when measures are taken to prevent them, NCDs no longer majorly affect an area. This can be seen by the low numbers of deaths caused by NCDs in the U.S.–only 413 per 100,000 population in 2012 versus 967 per 100,000 in Mongolia, according to the WHO.
The difference between the U.S. and these affected countries is fewer risk factors. Tobacco use, unhealthy diet and physical inactivity are the top offenders, and lower-income countries lack the capacity to prevent and control these risks.
Although the UN has seen progress with its aid efforts, the focus on NCDs is lost. Goal six of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) lays out the initiative to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, but NCDs are not mentioned in the statistics.
For such a globally present cause of death, it would seem natural that NCDs would be a priority for 2015. However, that is simply not the case.
So, where do we go from here?
We know that if the major risk factors for NCDs were eliminated, around three-quarters of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes would be prevented, as well as 40 percent of cancers, according to the WHO.
Health Affairs argues that Universal health coverage provides the opportunity for these diseases to be eradicated long-term. As far as combating NCDs, people in areas of extreme poverty need to be supplied with ways to obtain the necessary medicines without having to pay out-of-pocket.
More attention needs to be given to making accessible health care in developing countries a reality and taking care of those who are losing their lives due to preventable diseases.
In doing so, we must remember: we can conquer NCDs.
– Ashley Tressel
Sources: Health Affairs, UN, WHO, WHO 1, WHO 2, WHO 3, WHO 4
Photo: NotEnoughGood.com
New Smart Mall in Nigeria to Boost Local Economy
Aba is the capital city of Abia State in Nigeria and is regarded as a strategic trading hub in the southern part of the country. Potentially having the biggest smart mall in Nigeria, the community of Aba will not only change the way of traditional trade but also benefit local economic development.
According to Paul Obanua, CEO of Greenfield Asset Management, which is currently planning on building Aba Mega Mall, the project will influence and encourage privately funded infrastructural development in Nigeria and Africa in the following years.
Obanua is a 43-year-old Nigerian businessman managing Greenfield Assents Nigeria Limited, which is a company with the mission of renewing sub-Saharan African cities, regenerating communities and empowering lives.
“In our quest to achieve this (mission), one of the opportunities we identified is in the area of infrastructure development, especially retail infrastructure,” said Obanua during an interview with FORBES.
The traditional way of retail trade in Africa is an open market retail system. In Nigeria, Lagos has only four standard malls for a population of more than 20 million. Rapid urbanization and quickly increased youth demography enlarge the demand for a new shopping experience.
In Aba, a major industrial and commercial center in Nigeria, the current major shopping center is the Ariaria market that was built in the 1970s. Nowadays, there are 120,000 shops in that market, which exceeded their original capacity of 20,000 shops. Thus, a new retail infrastructure is really in need.
The planned smart mall community — Aba Mega Mall — will include 100,000 square meters of retail space for shopping, which can only partially satisfy the real demand of more than 500,000 square meters of retail space. It will also have other infrastructures, such as a multiplex movie theater, bank, transportation system and a dock for wholesales.
With a projected investment of $300 million, Aba Mega Mall is expected to be one of the biggest investments by Greenfield Assets Nigeria Limited.
Recently, there are 1,000 units finished during the first phase. Right after May 26, 2015, when it was commissioned, the commercial activities commenced.
Subsequently, the second phase has started and will include more advanced infrastructural construction, such as a luxury mall, 6-Screen Cinema, 100-room boutique hotel, 10-megawatt Independent Power Supply and the first Dry Port in the South-East of Nigeria with a fully automated 30,000 square meters for commercial activities.
“We are going to have the Special Economic Zone, which will be an integrated city of business parks that will consist of manufacturing concerns, like automotive manufacturing, steel fabrication, leather works, petrochemical industries, Agri-business and ICT Park,” said Obanua, representing the investment Greenfield Assets.
According to Obanua, the development of Aba Mega Mall will drive economic growth in the city and the nation. With the support of the infrastructure of Aba Mega Mall, Aba has the potential to develop into one of the biggest commercial hubs worldwide due to the volume of its trade and industry.
Moreover, the development of the mall will nurture industries such as the leather industry. The world-class trading environment in the Aba Mega Mall will offer the leather industry with sufficient facilities.
Most importantly, Aba Mega Mall will be likely to create employment opportunities in excess of more than 10,000 direct and indirect jobs. Thus, building potentially the “biggest mall” is definitely an efficient way to alleviate poverty and develop the local economy in the city or the nation.
– Shengyu Wang
Sources: Forbes, Greenfield Assets, Aba Mega Mall
Photo: blogspot
Rabies Outbreaks in Poor Rural Areas
Rabies occurs in more than 150 countries in the world. The disease is present on all continents with the exception of Antarctica. Each year, tens of thousands of people die from the infection it causes.
Most of the areas that are affected are in Asia and Africa and account for over 95% of human rabies deaths. The disease occurs mainly in remote rural communities. Rabies outbreaks are rampant among impoverished and vulnerable populations.
Rabies is a zoonotic disease. It is caused by a virus that allows the disease to be transmitted to humans from animals. The disease may affect domestic and wild animals, known carriers include foxes, raccoons, skunks, jackals, mongooses and other wild carnivore host species. However, dogs are the primary sources of human rabies deaths. Rabies is spread to people through close contact with an infectious substance such as bites, saliva or scratches. Most people usually become infected after a deep bite or scratch by an infected animal. Upon the onset of the disease developing, the disease is nearly always fatal.
Prevalence in rural areas is due to the lack of vaccinations. There is low vaccination coverage of dogs, and an inability to finance the costs of vaccination for humans. Other factors include poor management of dogs, and in particular the free movement of dogs, which increases their risk of contracting rabies from wildlife.
In terms of policy, rabies is lacking policy formulations to combat rabies throughout developing countries. As a result of the poor level of political commitment and effort to control rabies, there is a lack of understanding of how rabies impacts public health and socioeconomic affairs.
Rabies is a vaccine-preventable viral disease. Each year over 14 million people receive a post-exposure vaccination to prevent the disease. This vaccination prevents hundreds of thousands of rabies deaths. Other strategies to control the disease consist of controlling the dog population, vaccinating domesticated animals and education about prevention to reduce the number of animal bites. After a bite, immediately cleaning the wound, and immunization within a few hours after contact with the animal can prevent the onset of rabies.
The World Health Organization promotes human rabies prevention through the elimination of rabies in dogs. Their target is for the elimination of human and dog rabies in all Latin American countries by 2015, and South-East Asia by 2020.
– Erika Wright
Sources: Iowa State University, International Journal of Infectious Diseases, NIH, WHO
Photo: CNN
SWIOFISH Program Protects Zanzibar’s Fisheries
Identifying the problem, the World Bank launches the SWIOFish program to protect priority fisheries in the African region. Guided by the program, increasing fishermen in Zanzibar turn to ecotourism and seaweed farming to conserve the coastal ecosystem, protect Zanzibar’s fisheries and grow the local economy.
“Blast fishing destroys the fish habitats underwater, where fish reproduce, and that has had a big impact, especially on us who use ring nets to fish,” says a 32-year-old fisherman and added that, “the number of fish has drastically reduced we are not able to catch many fish like before.”
“We face many challenges,” says Ramia Tlia, project coordinator of SWIOFish. “Blast fishing ruins the entire ecosystem and biodiversity by turning coral reef into ashes and destroying all kinds of fish species. Illegal fishing by industrial trawlers is another issue that, along with the volatility of climate change, deeply impacts livelihoods in the region.”
In order to conserve the coastal ecosystem and protect the fisheries in the southwest Indian Ocean, the World Bank identified key high-value fisheries and current obstacles to marine fisheries in these areas and launched the SWIOFish program.
The new South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Governance and Shared Growth Program (SWIOFish) is aimed to improve the management effectiveness of selected priority fisheries at the regional, national and community levels. It contributes to the World Bank Group’s corporate goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity in a sustainable fashion.
The program includes Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Tanzania and Seychelles. SWIOFish in Tanzania, for example, focuses on tuna, prawns, small pelagics, octopus, reef fisheries and mariculture, such as seaweed, so as to strengthen the local employment on the economy of fisheries and mariculture.
Seaweed fishing was established a long time ago in Zanzibar and has been one of its key exports since the early 1990s. However, due to climate change, the slowly-warming water reduces seaweed. Last year, they lost four tons of seaweed due to warmer weather. In order to conserve the coastal ecosystem, fishermen in Zanzibar embrace seaweed farming and advocate ecotourism.
The SWIOFish program is based on coastal community involvement and cooperates with the government in the daily management of marine resources. The opportunities of ecotourism have increased since communities started participating in the management of the Menai Bay Conservation Area, which is a popular haven for whale tourism, fishing and diving, and Jozani Chwaka Park, which is famous for its mangroves and rare Colobus Monkeys.
Based on the good governance from SWIOFish program, ecotourism and seaweed farming, it’s possible to transform livelihoods, protect fisheries and develop the economy-based, local fisheries sectors in Zanzibar.
– Shengyu Wang
Photo: reefkeeping
Maternal and Child Health: Keeping Mother and Baby Alive
It has been a little over a year, in June 2014, since USAID introduced its newest strategic plan for maternal and child health. They hope to prevent the deaths of 15 million children and 600,000 mothers by 2020.
At the summit the participants reviewed the impact the USAID’s support has had all around the world; often putting a name and a face to those benefitting from the aid provided.
In India, mothers like Satyawati now know how to best take care of their newborns and other children thanks to the ability to obtain health-related knowledge and help from a local health worker.
Because Satyawati has access to this information, she has had her children properly vaccinated and employs proper hygiene practices in her home. In 1990 in India, children under the age of five had a mortality rate of 126 per 1,000 live births but in 2013 that number has been reduced to 53 per 1,000 live births.
Also, thanks to the support of the USAID, 27 hospitals in Malawi now have a device called a Pumani bCPAP that helps newborns with underdeveloped lungs breathe until they can do so own their own.
This device has tripled the survival rate of babies like Gloria Mtawila’s son Joshua, who stayed on the machine for a month until he could breathe on his own and is now a completely healthy baby.
All across the world bundles of joy are being born to tired but radiant mothers. Hospital staff assures that both have the best possible care in these first crucial hours, days and sometimes weeks after childbirth.
But also all across the world there are mothers on makeshift cots or laying on dirt floors. They and their babies do not have dedicated hospital staff looking after them.
Mom did not have access to prenatal vitamins and baby may not have access to life-saving vaccines. With poor living conditions, poor pre and post-birth care, and a poor quality of life all around, mom and her little one may not make it.
This is what USAID is working to prevent. USAID’s maternal and child health programs focus on cost-effective initiatives such as enabling access to nutritional supplements and vaccines.
The USAID has achieved great success. Maternal death rates have decreased by five percent in each of its 24 target countries while child mortality rates went down by four percent.
But this is still not enough. The USAID hopes to receive $850 million in funding for the maternal and child health program in order “to reduce child mortality to 20 or fewer deaths per 1,000 live births in every country by 2035, and to end preventable maternal deaths” (interaction.org).
Through this initiative, the USAID has inspired developing countries to develop strategies to reach these goals, and make the eradication of unnecessary maternal and child deaths possible.
– Drusilla Gibbs
Sources: USIAD, Interaction, Call to Action
Photo: Google Images
Voluntourism Q&A
Voluntourism (volunteer tourism) is a growing travel trend. It involves trading a typical vacation for an experience volunteering in orphanages and communities in poorer regions of the world. It is an opportunity for others to assist women, men and children in need.
Who participates in voluntourism?
Typically, privileged Americans and Europeans are participants in voluntourism. Most volunteers are women between the ages of 20-25. In some cases, colleges and universities offer volunteer travel courses that replace “fun and sun” spring break trips.
When did voluntourism begin?
Voluntourism began in the 1960s when the Peace Corps was founded. Since then, the number of those volunteering as a form of vacation have steadily increased. Each year, about 1.2 million volunteers participate in voluntourism.
What are the positives associated with voluntourism?
Traveling volunteers have the ability to engage others with important world issues. For example, after helping in Ghana, a person can return to the U.S. equipped with knowledge and stories that engage advocates. By speaking about their experience, they interest others in the cause. By doing this, more people can strive to make a difference in the lives of others. In addition, they are deepening their understanding of humanity, which contributes to a desire to create a better world for all.
What are the criticisms of voluntourism?
The biggest criticism of voluntourism is that it is a form of narcissism that allows travelers to make themselves the superheroes, the ones who “do good” for people who are impoverished. This idea can be seen when people post photos of themselves with children (that they do not know) or with people who they are helping. By posting these photos, volunteers are showcasing suffering and glorifying themselves.
For those who plan to participate in voluntourism, how can they truly have a positive experience?
The people who participate in voluntourism are by no means malicious. The problem comes when travelers are beefing up their resumes or adding a million pictures to Facebook. Voluntourism is not about self-fulfillment. For more meaningful work, leave IPhones at home or take pictures with the people you actually know. At the end of the trip, the experience isn’t really about making travelers feel good, but about donating time to help those who need it most.
– Kelsey Parrotte
Sources: The Guardian, Huffington Post 1, Huffington Post 2, NPR, Pacific Standard Magazine, Responsible Travel Report
Photo: Flickr
United Way of Windsor Focuses on Education to Fight Poverty
There is an almost universal understanding that a lack of education is almost always a ticket to poverty. From rural India to modern Japan, when children miss out on quality education, it sets them on a difficult path to poverty.
But the United Way of Windsor-Essex in Ontario, Canada is putting their foot down, and starting up a program to make sure low-income students get started off on the right foot. Twenty kids from underprivileged backgrounds are being placed in an immersive program set to get them off through school and off the poverty track.
Each of the youths, who start high school this month, have signed five-year agreements that commit them to finishing high school and keeping their grades up.
In return for doing well in school, the students receive special mentoring, after-school tutoring and counseling options, and perhaps most uniquely – $1,000 will be set aside each year towards each student’s post-secondary education.
A recent report by United Way found that roughly a quarter of county residents under 17 lived in low-income families, and more than half of those in single-parent households are living in poverty.
The report further found that family income has a strong effect on the “child’s cognitive, behavioral, and physical outcomes, as well a lesser relationship on social development.” Children from lower-income families, according to the report, are at a significant disadvantage compared to their higher-income peers.
Poverty places many challenges on young adults, including increased mental strain, the risk of poor nutrition, and, of course, reduced educational opportunities. According to Lorraine Goddard, CEO of the local United Way, many of the students in the pilot program come from “working poor” families in which the head of household is often struggling with multiple jobs to make ends meet.
“You become discouraged, you can be ostracized — kids give up,” said Goddard. The personal and financial support, which comes from individual donors, “builds a sense of hope in these kids,” said Goddard.
Participation in the On Track to Success program offers participating students a reprieve from some of the stresses of living in a low-income home, giving them more time and energy to devote to their education.
Even just completing high school generally allows individuals to earn an average of $10,000 more than someone without a diploma. Completing college earns an average of nearly $17,000 more than just a high school diploma.
By helping these students succeed now in high school and starting them with the funds to attend college, the United Way is putting these students on the path out of poverty.
– Gina Lehner
Sources: Windsor Star, We are United
Photo: tucsoncitizen
Accelerating Public Health Goals Using RCTs
One of the hardest parts of instituting public health policies that will benefit the poor is knowing beforehand whether or not they will work. After all, donors don’t want to waste money on ineffective programs, and those in the developing world don’t want to be troubled by policies that don’t positively impact their lives.
What if there was a way to determine the effectiveness of a policy before executing it? The answer might just be a technique called randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
RCTs are economics techniques that have been around since the 1960s, used to test the effectiveness of different social programs and economic policies.
The premise is simple enough: institute a scaled-down version of your policy over a random area, and compare it to another randomly assigned control group that does not benefit from the policy. While not a novel idea, randomized controlled trials only gained notoriety relatively recently in 1997 in Mexico.
In the midst of an economic crisis, Mexican President Zedillo tasked economist Santiago Levy with devising a strategy to alleviate the burden on the poor. Traditionally, the Mexican government had subsidized the cost of food or basic services like electricity.
Instead, Levy introduced a system of cash incentives to families who met requirements such as ensuring school attendance and visiting health clinics. Because the program rolled out in stages, Levy was able to collect data on regions who had the program, and those who hadn’t yet implemented it, providing him with control groups.
The program, called PROGRESA, was highly successful, with visitation to health clinics 60 percent higher for impacted populations versus control groups. Levy was also able to measure improved health outcomes for children, with a rate of illness decreasing by 23 percent, and an 18 percent reduction in anemia.
His experiment began an era of testing and collecting data on social programs where previously policy-makers could only guess at their effectiveness.
Since then, RCTs have been used to test the effectiveness of a wide range of policies. They have become a favorite tool of development professionals but have perhaps seen the most use for public health programs. In 2000, there were only about 10 public health studies published using RCTs as the primary method of analysis, while by 2012 there were over 200.
Ann Mei Chang, executive director of the Global Development Lab for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), commented that RCTs are “front and center on a lot of people’s agenda.”
Explaining why RCTs have become so important to aid donors, she asks, “where do we get the biggest bang for our buck?” RCTs are designed precisely to answer that question.
In Haryana, India, RCTs are being used to test the effectiveness of an incentive-based health program. 70 local health clinics were authorized to distribute sugar and cooking oil to families whose children start and finish a round of immunizations.
The goal is to determine whether or not incentives can increase immunization rates in the poorest districts. If incentives are proven to work through the randomized controlled trials, the government can begin to scale up the program to cover the entire state, if necessary.
However, not everyone wants to board the RCT train. Critics of the technique say that focusing on small metrics of success, such as whether or not incentives in-kind work to improve public health outcomes, detracts from the larger macroeconomic picture.
For example, while the results of the Haryana study seem to indicate that incentives improve vaccination rates, variables such as availability of medical personnel and supplies, geographic disease burdens, and income inequality would tend to confound the results.
Supposedly the fact that the trials are randomly assigned would control for these variables, but macroeconomists tend to disagree, preferring “Big Push” solutions to development issues.
As Princeton economist Angus Deaton puts it, “development is ultimately about politics,” meaning that the RCTs can only evaluate individual programs, rather than wider trends such as corruption, trade, infrastructure, etc.
RCTs aren’t the only evaluative technique for public health programs; randomization isn’t always desirable or necessary, and in a health crisis, preliminary testing takes too much time.
However, RCTs do represent a valuable tool for developing countries and aid donors alike to measure the efficacy of incentive-based programs and health policies. When it comes to public health, every dollar counts, and knowing policies work before scaling them up ensures that aid resources are used as effectively as possible.
– Derek Marion
Sources: Nature, The Economist
Photo: Wikimedia
Partners in Food Solutions
One of the most common topics that arise when discussing world hunger and food insecurity is that there are actually more than enough resources to feed all of the people of the world.
The problem isn’t that there is not enough food for everyone, but rather that there is not an efficient way of distributing it. Or, oftentimes, on-location farms do not have the resources to grow enough food for the people in the area who need it.
Partners in Food Solutions (PFS) is a nonprofit organization that works to connect big food companies (such as General Mills, Cargill, Royal DSM and Bühler) with smaller food processors in the developing world to reduce food insecurity.
These large, experienced companies are able to provide small and growing businesses (SGBs) with information on how to increase productivity, improve quality and create all-around safer and more nutrient-rich food for surrounding populations.
In addition, PFS and its partners also help African food companies to develop business and finance skills and make areas such as distribution and packaging as efficient as possible. By supplying technological resources and training, there can be a consistent and reliable sharing of knowledge to help companies keep growing.
Jeff Dykstra, the CEO of PFS, says that “food insecurity in Africa has been often addressed in a reactionary way, and the opportunity that’s there now is to address it in a proactive way.”
At its heart, the organization just wants to create a more efficient and valuable food chain. One of its strengths is that it recognizes the importance of partnerships.
PFS is funded by corporations and private donors and also supported by a devoted base of volunteers. USAID TechnoServe is a PFS partner involved with implementing programs and strategies on the ground in Africa. So, while PFS manages volunteers and designs programs, Technoserve implements the relationships with SGBs.
By working with TechnoServe, PFS is able to evaluate which food companies are the most in need of help and look to be the most successful. The partnership has grown to assist over 700 SGBs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia.
Almost 829,000 local farm holders were impacted through projects that are designed to bring expertise to small African food companies. Kykstra said that the money is generating a return into local economies at double the rate of taxpayer investment.
These partnerships are valuable and effective in the fight against global food insecurity. As President Obama himself said on a July 28 visit to the Faffa Food Share Company in Ethiopia, “Having strong corporate partners alongside local businesses can really make a big difference.”
Faffa Food Share is a client of PFS, and also the primary supplier of food for children over 6 months old in the country.
Although the chain of technologies, innovations and partnerships involved in the PFS organization is complicated, the core idea is simple.
The organization’s goal is to help small farms bring their crops to local marketplaces, making them sustainable contributors to their economies, cutting back on unnecessary food transportation expenses and helping entire countries to become self-sufficient when it comes to food.
All of this can be done by sharing knowledge and resources already available to the first world. Stephen Tanda, the managing board member of Royal DSM, calls PFS “the missing link in connecting the need to address malnutrition on the ground and working with companies in Africa to make these safe and high-quality nutritious foods that benefit the local population.”
Partners in Food Solutions is a great example of a lot of moving parts, of all different sizes and spheres of influence, working together to make a better world.
– Emily Dieckman
Sources: General Mills, Partners in Food Solutions, YouTube 1, YouTube 2
Photo: Flickr