Comments on: Why don’t we just send aid money directly to poor people’s cellphones?

By: Yetunde Allen

Yetunde Allen — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:58:34 +0000

Laudable and innovative – while demonstrating true understanding of the poor. It is a concept that will be refined over time but it’s a really great start. Harnesses technology very well – from google earth, to mPesa payment platforms.

I’d be very interested in the gender results.

By: Joymalya Chakraborty

Joymalya Chakraborty — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 05:35:59 +0000

if it’s a post paid , alike codes western union then alike data cable fit in input ATM like is that feasible ! but above , a great idea

By: Vishnu Sridharan

Vishnu Sridharan — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:14:47 +0000

It is great to see an NGO taking up the ideas of cash transfers directly to the poor, as these types of programs have led to great successes in Latin America and throughout the world. We at the New America Foundation’s Global Assets Project have been advocating for some time now that official development assistance also be transmitted directly to beneficiaries, and that government cash transfers be linked to savings opportunities. Thanks for this very thoughtful post, which inspired a post of my own highlighting our work in this sphere:
http://assets.newamerica.net/blogposts/2012/from_your_pocket_to_theirs_a_new_approach_to_charity-62336

By: Paul Niehaus

Paul Niehaus — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:03:37 +0000

Lots of thoughtful comments — thanks to everyone who has posted. I thought I’d react to a couple of themes that I see emerging in these posts.

One is on gender and the household. Like many of you, we at GD are keen on understanding these issues, which is why currently we are giving to men in some cases and women in others. We’ll have detailed data on the long-term implications of this by 2013. In the meantime we have also been calling each recipient to ask whether they household had a hard time reaching agreement on how to use the money; we’ve seen two such cases thus far out of around 350 interviews, so recipients are self-reporting a fairly harmonious process.

A second theme is about choosing who is ‘poor’. As several of you have pointed out, there are tough tradeoffs here. One drawback of our approach is that there are surely households that are poor by any reasonable standard but do not live in mud huts. On the other hand, it is much easier to prove whether a household lives in a mud hut than it is to, say, prove what their income was last year. This is important for preventing fraud — you or I can walk into any village and see for ourselves whether a recipient is eligible or not. (In fact we can even use Google Earth to check what their roofs are made of.) Alternative approaches like asking village elders to choose who is poor are known to create potential for bribery and collusion, so we want to keep power out of the hands of local power-brokers. Looking at all these, we decided to go with mud huts, but also to constantly keep looking for ways to improve that rule without losing objectivity. Your thoughts are of course welcome.

Duncan’s idea, which I thought was interesting, is to make people eligible not so much because they are poor but because we think they can do great things, e.g. bring about needed political reforms. Thoughts on how we might identify such people?

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:28:35 +0000

Seems pretty daft to me, all kinds of potential for fraud. How do you know if the number is of the person you-think-it-is? What happens if they’re pressurised to give the phones or the money to someone else?

Are there any strings? Can the recipients use the money in any way that they like?

By: Joe Crook

Joe Crook — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:28:18 +0000

Sponsoring an activist sounds interesting but doesn’t that open up a can of worms? After all, one man’s “peace activist” or “rights campaigner” is another man’s “terrorist”. You make reference to the Arab Spring and this would be the perfect example. All aid is inherently political but what if we were able to send money directly to support a Muslim Brotherhood activist? Some would be in favour of that but others would oppose it depending on one’s political opinion.

By: Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:12:54 +0000

Pas à Pas blog discussed GiveDirectly and the gender and targeting issues. GD are specifically investigating the differences in impact between giving money to men and to women – see below.

http://pasapasblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/just-givedirectly-to-the-poora-few-thoughts-on-targeting-and-empowerment

http://www.givedirectly.org/sites/default/files/GiveDirectly_RCT_Overview_20110616.pdf

By: Cynan

Cynan — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:04:40 +0000

>95% in favour on this, Give Directly do make their transfers to recipients quarterly though (in order to keep transfer costs down).

How much will this influence what people spend the funds on, ie investment/assets rather than ongoing consumption needs? If this is targeted at the poorest households, might support to their ongoing consumption be more of a priority?

I’ll watch with interest their RCT/evaluation on where recipients spend the money, but if its high on assets I’ll wonder to what degree it was function of the design. I’m not aware of an OECD country social safety net that makes payments this infrequently; Bolsa Familia is also monthly.

By: John Magrath

John Magrath — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:59:38 +0000

The methodology of transfer is innovative; the criteria for selection seem much less certain; the approach feels far from innovative. I can’t see how this is much different from an old-fashioned “charitable” mindset to – basically – “sponsor a poor person”, like “sponsor a child”. Even child sponsorship organisations though have, usually, progressed beyond sponsoring individuals to finding ways for wider communities to benefit (even if they’re not always so transparent about it in their appeals).

By: Pete Cranston

Pete Cranston — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:51:50 +0000

Mmm, development 2.0?

1. On Projects Direct, last time I worked in OGB we were setting up all these bloggy things and tried it with Projects Direct. Problem then was that the busy, successful people who contribute to PD had no time to read project blogs (and now tweets)

2. Which is a more positive gloss on one of the negative aspects of the online trends you describe: that people click and forget, or click to forget – which is true of both millenials and those of us from the last century

Finally, good discussion on the same topic from Linda Raftree, with some excellent historical analysis http://bit.ly/wxBV8j