The Fast Company article begins by outlining the grim reality of our current aid situation:

Every year, wealthy countries and donors ship billions upon billions of dollars in aid to the developing world. The money has not bought prosperity: Diarrhea still kills 1.5 million children annually. More than 210 million kids work when they should be in a classroom. Polio, which had once been eradicated in all but four countries, is spreading across Africa again. Some 2.6 billion people have no access to modern toilets. And more than 1 billion people don't have enough to eat in 2009, setting a new record.

Why? From an unremarkable old building overlooking the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a trio of MIT economists is leading a remarkable global movement that's working to find out. "A lot of money gets spent by well-meaning people with no idea what they're doing," says Abhijit Banerjee, who has spent much of his career studying corruption. "It's wasted."

Obviously, much of the money that goes to help the developing world is not being used effectively. But what's not so obvious is how all that money should be spent. That's where the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) comes in. Led by the Indian-born Banerjee, Briton Rachel Glennerster, and Esther Duflo — a Frenchwoman who just won a MacArthur genius grant for her work on poverty — this global network of researchers has one joint ambition: to transform the living conditions of 100 million poverty-stricken people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Within the next five years. On a budget of barely $10 million. While building development models that could eventually effect change for billions more people.

J-PAL's work is vital because of their intention to question commonly held assumptions, and to use research to determine if a particular course of action results in a certain result. This may seem basic, but quite often, theorists develop their ideas and implement them, without going back to evaluate the effectiveness of a certain program. J-PAL manages a network of affiliated researchers around the globe, tasked with gathering data and sharing their results with the group.

Thanks to J-PAL and their affiliates, certain ideas that are taken as truth are being reconsidered. In a small village in India, a research team discovered that the conventional wisdom said that local parents were afraid immunizations would sicken their children further. However, research showed that with a small incentive (in this case, a small bag of lentils per visit) dramatically improved immunization rates. In another study, J-PAL researchers discovered that the traditional practice of charging people nominal fees for insecticide-treated bed nets, deworming drugs, water chlorination services, and HIV testing was a discouraging factor, when many organizations assumed that people would value these things more if they were provided at a nominal fee.

The J-PAL method is not without criticism. Blitstein notes:

The notion of experimenting on the poor can be unsettling, evoking shades of past scientific scandals like the Tuskegee Study. Duflo, who is working on projects in five countries, counters that the billions of dollars being spent by governments and donors to fight poverty are tantamount to experiments anyway, so better to have experts watching over them, implementing scientific methodology and gauging whether they actually work. "With precautions in mind, we believe that not experimenting is what is unethical," she says. "If you scale up a policy that does no good, or even some unintended harm, or if you do not adopt a policy that could make a great amount of good, this is when you are carrying out gigantic experiments on people's lives. And that should not be acceptable."

The more common — and more valid — criticisms cut to the heart of the way J-PAL researchers study and interpret their trials. Several well-known economists have raised questions about the randomized controlled approach, citing long-standing criticisms of clinical medical trials by the Nobel-winning University of Chicago economist James Heckman. Though the arguments are math-heavy, the concepts are straightforward: It's difficult to prove that a small-scale experiment in one village applies to another town with another culture in another country. And while trials describe the effects of a program on a population, they may fail to explain why some people are affected more than others or are impacted negatively. Overly focused experiments may be dismissed as little more than program evaluations, salves that address poverty's symptoms without aiding understanding of its root causes.

J-PAL, however, is confident that their system will be beneficial in the long run. Their focus on smaller, individual experiments allow them to determine patterns - and their hope is to reshape the idea of of a problem, which will eventually work toward discovering lasting solutions.

(Image Credit: Doug Menuez for Fast Company)

Which Poverty-Fighting Policies Work? J-PAL Has the Answer [Fast Company]

Earlier: Nick Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn Talk Half The Sky With Oprah

Making the powerful statement that "no child dreams of becoming a militant or a drug trafficker," Shakira writes:

Education is the only way to break this cycle. But in today's world there are still 72m children who are denied the opportunity to go to school and 226m adolescents who don't attend secondary school.

My foundation in Colombia, Pies Descalzos ("Barefoot"), has proved that the poorest children can be educated. For less than $2 a day per child, our schools provide food, education and counselling services to thousands of students. Our schools help underprivileged children grow in sustainable ways and provide them with the tools they need to break out of the cycle of poverty.

Her words show a grasp of how many problems need to be addressed to break the cycle of poverty for good. While education is the linchpin for success, other actions need to be in place to help stabilize both the child and the family to ensure the maximum potential:

Our work in Colombia combines high-quality academic instruction with recreation, health care and psychological support. We operate six schools in three diverse regions of Colombia: Barranquilla, Quibdó and Altos de Cazucá. Over 5,000 students are directly served in our schools-but approximately 30,000 people benefit from our programmes. For example, in working to combat malnutrition we not only provide students with nourishing meals and evaluate their nutritional status, but we also provide their parents with critical information on health and nutrition.

In addition to physical-health services, the foundation's programmes support emotional health through counselling and exposure to the arts as well as through advice for families and parenting classes.

We also support the broader community. On any given day our school buildings are hubs of activity-providing a range of services, including adult-literacy classes, youth-leadership development, access to libraries and computer training. Perhaps most importantly, we have also begun to form parent co-operatives focused on teaching parents and on income-generating activities aimed at ensuring that families are financially secure.

We are now in the process of taking this success story to other parts of the world through our non-profit Barefoot Foundation, based in the United States.

If our foundation can bring quality education to some of the poorest children in the world there is no reason why governments can't do the same thing.

Shakira Rests Hips to Study at UCLA [AP/Huffington Post]
Sí, se puede [The Economist]
Official Site [The Barefoot Foundation]

[Gaithersburg, Maryland; November 17. Image via Getty]

GAITHERSBURG, MD - NOVEMBER 17: Manna Food Center volunteer Sharon Hwang (C) sorts donated food into individual boxes at the center November 17, 2009 in Gaithersburg, Maryland. A new report shows that 49 million Amercians struggle to find sufficient food, the hightest number since the government began keeping track in 1995. 'We are the canary in the coal mine,' food center Executive Director Amy Ginsberg said about the center's ability to sense bad economic weather ahead. 'This is our new normal,' she said mentioning the increase in the number of people in Montgomery County being served by the center. Mana now helps 3,300 families a month, up from 1,800 families just two years ago. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

[Mogadishu, November 15. Image via Getty]

Internally displaced women line up to receive therapeutic food for their children at a food distribution centre run by an organization called CAACID, funded by the UN agencies and European Union, in Mogadishu, Somalia, on November 15, 2009. The agency CAACID says that it's currently feeding 74,000 adults and 5,033 children under the age of 5 in its 24 centres which are open 6 days a week across the capital Mogadishu. The agency also said that it will be running out of food due to the shortage of food aid from World Food Program (WFP) which is currently facing tough times after the United States halted its funding for Somalia following allegations of mismanagement of food aid in the Somalia. In a statement today from a spokesman of islamist hardliners Al-Shabab, Sheikh Cali Maxamuud Raage urged the Somali community not to rely on food aid as it discourages farmers from growing food and makes the Somali community dependent on aid Photo. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMED DAHIR (Photo credit should read MOHAMED DAHIR/AFP/Getty Images)

[Raducaneni, Romania; November 12. Image via Getty]

Roma children play in the village of Raducaneni, 300 km northeast of Bucharest on November 12, 2009. The number of Romanians at risk of falling into poverty will increase by 1.7 percent from 2008, up to 7.4%, with the children facing higher risks according to the World Bank�s Country Partnership Strategy with Romania. AFP PHOTO/DANIEL MIHAILESCU (Photo credit should read DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP/Getty Images)

[Balan, Haiti; November 12. Image via Getty]

A Haitian child nurse checks the weight of a child during a food distribution event from the United Nations World Food Program, Programme Alimentaire Mondial (PAM) on November 12, 2009 in Balan a suburb of Ganthier. AFP PHOTO Thony BELIZAIRE (Photo credit should read THONY BELIZAIRE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Bridgeport, September 30. Image via Getty]

BRIDGEPORT, CT - SEPTEMBER 30: A woman walks by a shuttered business September 30, 2009 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. According to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, Connecticut residents fell into poverty at a rate higher than any other state in the country last year. While statistically it is still one of the wealthiest states in the country, there are now 314,806 residents of Connecticut living below the federal poverty line, up from 268,880 in 2007. In Bridgeport, a struggling former manufacturing city, the poverty rate was 21.6 percent. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

[Homestead, Florida; September 21. Image via Getty]

HOMESTEAD, FL - SEPTEMBER 21: (L-R) Beth Frazier, Carol Echeverria and Angie Solomon along with other volunteers sort food into individual bags to be given out at Farm Share, a non-profit business, that helps families in need on September 21, 2009 in Homestead, Florida. Facing sharp budget cuts due to economic conditions the county of Miami-Dade may have to cut the budget of Farm Share, which in turn will affect some of the 6,000 people they are helping. One year ago Farm Share was helping 3,000 individuals and families. Cities and counties across the nation are facing the same dilemma as tax rates drop and municipalities look for programs to cut to make up budget deficits. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

[Karachi, September 16. Image via Getty]

A poverty-stricken Pakistani woman and her child wait in an impoverished locality of Khori Garden for free distribution of food items at the same place where a tragic stampede occured on September 14, in Karachi on September 16, 2009. Pakistan has opened a judicial inquiry into a stampede that killed 20 women and children on September 14 queuing for food handouts in an impoverished district of financial capital Karachi. AFP PHOTO/Rizwan TABASSUM (Photo credit should read RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP/Getty Images)

Related: The Science of Hunger: What 1 Billion People Feel [LiveScience]

[Chicago, June 24. Image via Getty]

CHICAGO - JUNE 24: Children wait for the start of activities following breakfast at a day camp program at Casa Juan Diego St. Pius V Youth Center June 24, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois. The center provides free breakfast and lunch to about 90 children a day in the program. With 84 percent of Chicago public school students receiving free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches during the school year, families are forced to rely on other sources such as Casa Juan Diego for this help during the summer months. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Tanglad writes:

A whopping 90 to 99 percent of these loans are paid back with interest, another shining indicator of microcredit’s success. But there is an ugly side to ensuring repayment, where poor women are made to police one another and punish defaulters with collective acts of aggression… Microcredit beneficiaries are grouped into cohorts of five to fifteen members. They are given clear instructions: “You are all responsible for the loan and have to make sure that no one defaults.” This lays the foundation of a very effective surveillance system, wherein poor women monitor other poor women. And the poorest women, the ones who need loans the most, are evicted from the group to minimize the risk of default.

Apparently, women involved in microlending go to great lengths to repay their loans, cutting back on family expenses, like food, and children's school items. Still, writes Sarah Bosely in the Guardian, "Women could change the face of Africa." Bosely reports from Uganda, where women hold families together, despite being victims of sexual extortion and violence. She notes that the UN finds that 60% of the billion poorest people on the planet are women; 70% of the 130 million children who are not in school are girls. Wouldn't it make sense that any assistance would be a good thing?

Not according to Tanglad, who argues:

The supposed success of “compassionate capitalism” strategies obscures the enormous social costs behind statistics such as amazing loan repayment rates. Social costs that are ultimately borne by women who are already marginalized by their socioeconomic and indigenous status.

Microcredit: “A Political Economy Of Shame” [Racialicious]
Hope Rests With Africa's Women [Guardian]
Related: Do Hopes For Development In Africa Really Only Lie With Women?

Earlier: Money Doesn't Make The World Go Around, But It Helps

Parents in developing countries may be afraid to let their daughters travel to school and risk sexual assault. Girls may not want to attend schools with no girls' bathrooms. The lack of access to tampons and pads is a problem too, leading many girls to miss school during their periods. Since school is expensive, many families send only their oldest sons, even though, as Alter points out, their daughters are "actually much more likely to help their families." And, according to former Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling, girls need at least eight years of school to really make a difference.

It's a little disheartening that the drive to educate girls focuses on their relative selflessness — it would be nice if boys gave back too, rather than leaving girls to be caregivers. But improving girls' education is important for the girls themselves, as well as perhaps the most efficient way to bring families out of poverty. So what can you do? Well, check out The Girl Effect for starters.

Education: It’s Not Just About the Boys. Get Girls Into School. [Newsweek]

• Many facial plastic surgeons are turning away potential patients because their expectations are too high. • The ACLU is helping a woman from Pennsylvania fight for her right to get a permit to open a pole-dancing workout studio. • More on the Indian Vogue scandal: Turns out fashion people are tasteless when it comes to stirring up sales. • The Spanish government's Socialist Party is forming a panel to amend its restrictive abortion law, which only allows abortions to be performed in the first 12 weeks in cases of rape, 22 weeks in cases of fetal malformation, and at any time if a psychologist deems pregnancy harmful to the woman. • The level of acceptance of transgender workers is growing in top companies, with 125 of the Fortune 500 currently including "gender identity" in their nondiscrimination policies. • Infant abductions are increasingly rare in the U.S., with most of the abductions taking place at the mother's home or in public and the average kidnapper being an overweight woman who feigns pregnancy. • The house and museum of Edith Warton in Massachusetts (called 'The Mount') is facing foreclosure. • Author Ruth Butler chronicles the muse-wives of famous painters in her new book, Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives Of Cezanne, Monet and Rodin. • 2channel and Komachi are two of Japan's largest anonymous online forums for women, where women talk about their personal lives, troll, and get into arguments.

Tennessee's High Infant Death Rate [ABC]

On her way to the market, Lingani explained the ugly math: A year ago, she could feed her entire family a nutritious meal of meat and vegetables and peanut sauce for about 75 cents. But now the family gets much lower-quality food for twice the price … "When the children ask for food, we have to give it to them," she said. "We're mothers."

It's not just an economic problem; it's also cultural. Shopping and cooking, aka making sure the family has food, is "the job of women," Lingani's husband, a retired police officer, says. He has three wives. One, who is nearly blind, can't do chores. Lingani and the other working wife each give part of their salary to their husband, and he gets a bowl of food that is roughly the same size as one that the two wives and eight small grandchildren share. (The food is dried fish and baobab leaves flavored with potash, a paste made by boiling down water strained through ashes.)

A recent study has shown that people in Burkina Faso spend 75% of their income on food. Pregnant women and young mothers sacrifice medical care; some turn to prostitution to pay for food. Families who can't pay for school and school clothes take girls out of school. There's no upside here people, just something to think about when we're complaining about the price of Starbucks or gas.

Africa's Last and Least [Washington Post]
Report: Women Suffer Most In Food Crisis [UPI]

[Colbert Report [Comedy Central]