The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a multi-billion dollar international financing mechanism intended to combat these scourges by dramatically increasing the availability of funding for practical health initiatives. Unlike much international development aid, Global Fund support will be available only to programs that developing countries design and implement themselves. This novel approach means that the ability to continue raising funds from the international community depends on successful results from these country-led programs.

The issue is that most countries which need access to this fund the most don’t have the skillsets to apply for access to this fund in a timely and professional manner. So, in 2003, Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University professor and author of The End of Poverty) & Glaser Foundation (Rob Glaser who founded RealNetworks) founded The Access Project for the Global Fund — press release and overview.

The initiative offers hands-on strategic planning to governments of developing countries and organizations applying for funding, helping to evaluate existing programs, identify the most successful models and monitor implementation of new programs when those are funded.

I think this is a very interesting investment approach which directs funds to help planning for ultimately better use of larger implementation projects. We all know that good planning is a smart investment.

Interesting article from today’s NY Times titled Research Changes Ideas About Children and Work identifies poverty as the #1 reason children work instead of going to school.

A couple of highlights:

• This goes against the popular “understanding” that children go to work based on cultural expectations or poor education of their parents.
• Most working children work for their parents in agriculture, not in factories.
• According to a study, rising incomes account for 60% of the reason that children no longer work.
• As income rises, parents often choose to hire [adult] labors and/or invest in productivity enhancements like fertilizers and equipment to replace the labors of their children.

The reality is that most parents know that education matters to their children and they only resort to having them work when they have no other choice for survival.

The recommendation: Alleviate poverty.

I found the UK web site for Make Poverty History does a much better job of articulating the mission and message of what in the USA is called the ONE Campaign. They define three items that they are advocating for:

(1) Trade Justice
(2) Drop (Forgive) Debt
(3) More & Better Aid

Read about the details behind each of these asks. I am much supportive of this more holistic approach than the ONE Campaign’s approach of being cute with lots of celebrities around the word “one” and focusing on 1% of GDP as aid.

Jim Wallis of Sojourners provides an interesting summary of what was and wasn’t accomplished at G8 meeting in the latest SoJoMail e-zine.

The July 2nd-8th issue of The Economist has this as the headline as the world turns interest towards “making poverty history” in Africa. A few interesting quotes from the introductory article:

“Some [critics] say aid [to Africa] is useless. Some say it is worse than that. Economists worry that it crowds out export industries, by, for example, bidding up the price of skilled workers. And aid may make governments dependent on their paymasters in the rich world, not their taxpayers at home. For every extra dollar of aid they are given, governments raise 28 cents less in tax, says Sanjeev Gupta, of the IMF.”

“The claims for aid should not be inflated. Grand, global targets, such as the UN Millennium Development Goals, might helf the international bureaucracies fill their coffers and justify their existence. But they also invite disappointment and disillusionment when the goals are missed.”

“But neither should the demands be exaggerated. The sums (the Commission for Africa calls for an extra $25 billion a year over the next three to five years) amount to just 0.08% of the 22 richest donors’ combined GDP. And besides, what else would the money be spent on? The European Union alone wasted $55 billion last year on a common agricultural policy designed to keep food expensive for its consumers.”

“To benefit Afrcia the money need not even be spent in Africa itself. It is sometimes said that 90% of the $75 billion spent each year on medical research is devoted to the concerns of just 10% of the world’s population.”

“No one should be naive about aid. It cannot make poverty history, and it can do harm. But to say that nothing works is wrong. Cynicism is only the most common form of naivety.”

A book I read recently called “The 80/20 Principle” states (without strong references) that at least 80% of the wealth in every society (today and thru history) is held by 20% of the populace. The USA is about this level today. Most developed nations are even more highly concentrated — e.g. 90/10. If this is true, then it seems unlikely that we’ll achieve (in the best case) a distribution of much better than 80/20. The issue is how we ensure that the bottom 50% live in some level of dignity.

I am eager to support poverty elimination approaches which have as the goal “sustainability”. Why I continue to financially support many other survival-centric approaches to the poor, I am just much less passionate about the survival oriented category of efforts.

I think “sustainability” is of huge importance. If people can only continue to stay out of poverty if someone doesn’t fire them or if they don’t have a natural disaster or if one of their family members doesn’t die or get sick or if many other common scenarios come about then I don’t think that this should be considered sustainable.

My observation is that the vast majority of good intentioned spending of $10′s of billions of dollars (to developing nations – not including Marshall Plan and rebuilding Japan after WWII) since the 1950′s has been completely ineffective in achieving long-term results. This includes IMF, World Bank, NGOs and direct gov’t aid. While many lives have probably been saved (and to a lesser degree the opposite), I don’t think many people can honestly say that there has been much if any dent in sustainable poverty reduction based on these efforts. Something is fundamentally wrong with the approach. As Harry pointed out to me, the single largest exception so far is China where a totalitarian regime turned to capitalism (but not
democracy) resulting in 200 million (is this right?) people being lifted out the of $2/day ultra-poverty pit. The only other material (on scale) example that I’m aware of is the micro-finance industry where all told maybe 50 million people (I’m guessing here) have been helped to step sustainably out of poverty. Micro-finance and the very adaptive Chinese economy have demonstrated good success towards my definition of sustainability.