I went to the Jacmel area last week and came back both very impressed with what is happening in the Southeast Department and even more worried about what is happening in Port-au-Prince. We had sponsored a two-day workshop to…
Every now and then, life hands you a chance to make a difference. I am fortunate to be in the right place at the right time I used to run the Pan American Development's Haiti disaster program before I moved to…
A friend of mine, Rahul Deodhar, has just put out an excellent primer on poverty. He explains beautifully the concepts that I touched on in one of my early posts "The New Thinking on Poverty." The basic idea is that people…
I am coming to the conclusion that poverty is influenced far more by macro economic policy than by antipoverty projects. I’ve just read Philip D Osei’s 2001 critique of the antipoverty programs in Jamaica. He asserts that although poverty did…
I’ve just read Paul Shaffer’s excellent article “New Thinking on Poverty: Implications for Globalisation and Poverty Reduction Strategies” (Real-world Economics Review, Issue no. 47, 3 October 2008, pp. 192-231). It is a great overview of the current thinking on poverty…
One of the intriguing aspects of working on a movement to end extreme poverty is that we should be able to quantify the progress. It should be possible to come up with a good estimate of the number of people…
The Dominican Republic is a fascinating country, full of amazing contrasts. On one hand, it is a modern country with good roads, a modern skyline (photo Miguel Calzada, Diario Libre). The new Metro train system is almost working and there…