Sunday, October 03, 2010

This American Life on Hatian Devevlopment , Agriculture, and More

Togo

As as a big fan of This American Life, I was really pleased to hear a story about Haiti and the dificulties of making development work. Adam Davidson and Chana Joffe-Walt of Planet Money tell the story of a poor farmer with a couple of mango trees and enormous potential to get herself out poverty with a tiny bit of investment. As it turns out, this little investment requires navigating a complex set of culture dynamic, economic behavior, government red-tape, and NGO disincentives. This story showcases how NGOs can, sometimes, be the problem they are trying to solve; in Haiti, both the amount of non-profits and Haitians living in poverty continue to increase. This is another good story from National Public Radio  about the endless debate greed and charity.