Month: October 2009

Speaking of Cars…

By Alanna Shaikh | | 7 Comments |

car in mud

Speaking of cars, some things I have observed about cars and driving. They may or may not generalize:

1. When your project owns the cars, your drivers will be happy, enthusiastic types who show real commitment to your work. When you hire contract drivers who own the cars, you get cranky hard-cases who begrudge every extra mile they drive. Of course, contract drivers are also a much better financial choice.

2. The polite thing to do is to sit in front next to the driver, unless you’re in a high threat environment. In that case, sit in back so you can both dive to safety if there’s gunfire.

3. If you’re sitting in a parked car on a hot day, the best way to keep cool is to open your door and roll up the window, to divert any breeze you get into the car.

4. How to get into an ancient Landcruiser while wearing a skirt: Stand next to the car, facing forward. Put your left foot up onto the running board, and hold the grab handle with your left hand. Step up and pivot into the car, leading with your left hip. Slide into the seat. If you need to get out at some point, you are on your own. I haven’t mastered that yet.

5. Earplugs are a nice solution to the open window = noise, closed window = stifling hot dilemma. I like the kind you squish with your fingers. Obviously, this is a bad choice if you are the driver. In that case, roll up your own window and make your passengers open theirs.

6. You can back a 4×4 surprisingly far into an open drainage ditch without breaking an axle.

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Photo Credit: tjflex2
Chosen because I really hope I never have to do that with a car.

A Development Disappointment

By Alanna Shaikh | | 4 Comments |

The GiveWell blog ran some disappointing news yesterday. They took a look at the Grameen Foundation’s village phone program. The village phones program is much beloved; it’s been highly touted as an effective way to lift people out of poverty. The foundation gives a loan to an entrepreneur (usually female), who then rents the phone to people in her village. It gives her a new source of income, and provides access to telecommunications for her village.

Here’s the problem; it doesn’t seem to work. The phones aren’t that useful to the people living in the villages. Having access to the phone had “absolutely no impact of the phones on trading activity or availability of goods in local markets” and very small (non-significant) impacts on profits and measures of well-being (school enrollment, consumption of meat, etc.).

They also don’t provide significant income to the phone owners. “Their hours worked rose significantly both for their new phone business and for their already-existing businesses, but their profits and wages paid did not rise…” In other words, the phones were a bad investment.

Combined with the recent studies finding that microfinance doesn’t have the hoped-for impact on poverty, we’re rapidly running out of magic bullets.

TED India

By Alanna Shaikh | | 6 Comments |

TED India splash page

Those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter may not know that I am attending TED India as a fellow next week. TED is a conference devoted to problem-solving and unexpected solutions; the theme for next week in Mysore is “The Future Beckons.”

I’m pretty excited about the conference, and I am hoping to learn a lot. But I’ve never been to a conference like this before; I’ve only ever been to technical conferences like the APHA annual meeting, or Global Health Council. Inspiration and ideas are a whole new deal for me. So, since my readers are some of the smartest people I know – how do I get the most out of this? What kind of sessions do you think I should attend? Should I write down what I learned every night? Have any of you been to TED? Anything I should prepare for?

How I’m Judging You

By Alanna Shaikh | | 14 Comments |

Statue of Justice

These are my (arbitrary, personal, non-evidence-based) rules of thumb for identifying good development work:

Bad signs

  1. Starting out by buying cars.
  2. Claiming to work in “Africa” without specifying a location.
  3. More than four partners in your implementation coalition.
  4. A local to expat ration of less than 5:1 (10 or 15 to 1 – or more – is far better).
  5. Planning/budgeting for more than 4 visits from HQ a year.
  6. Extensive use of international interns.
  7. Using program staff as translators and interpreters.

Good signs

  1. National staff in management positions over expats.
  2. Terrifying, highly experienced financial staff and a rigorous financial reporting system.
  3. Close collaboration with government on its lowest level – with city, town, and village authorities.
  4. Sharing of monitoring and evaluation data with the communities the projects works with, and training those communities on how to review the data.
  5. A clear vision of what the target area (group, community…) will look like once the project is over and what will have changed. Approval from the target area/group/community of the vision, and support for it.
  6. Extensive use of paid local interns.
  7. Specific rather than standardized indicators for monitoring and evaluation.
  8. Translators on staff.

PS – Thanks to Brendan for reminding me why I write.

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Photo credit: Citizensheep
Chosen because, you know, judging, justice…look, it’s not easy choosing images.