Tiny Spark

MacArthur “genius” award winner Corinne Dufka was a photojournalist for Reuters, covering armed conflicts in 17 nations. But inside a hotel room in Rwanda, she had an “epiphany” that compelled her to leave photojournalism at the height of her career. Dufka discusses what drives her to champion the rights of the marginalized, whether inside a psych ward in San Francisco, at a rain-soaked refugee crossing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or in a Bosnian battlefield, where Dufka herself was severely injured by a landmine. Dufka is now a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Foreign aid reached its highest point in 2014 but less has been going to the poorest nations. Development economist Owen Barder gives reasons for this trend and explains why he won't sit on panels that exclude women.

It turns out that one of America's fiercest aid critics is just a soft-spoken guy from Ohio. "A lot of people start characterizing your work who really haven't read you very closely, or even at all. And they paint you as more extreme than you really are. And I think that has happened to me," Bill Easterly tells us. (Photo Credit: Jerry Bauer)

Promo: Economist Bill Easterly talks about the challenges of doing good in repressive regimes.

Until recently, Ken Berger led the world's largest charity evaluator. He found that money wasn't necessarily flowing to the best charities. "I don't see a correlation between where the dollars are going and impact. The brand that is most well known wins." (Photo Credit: Brian Sims, Flickr)

Former CEO of nation's largest charity evaluator says few nonprofits know if they're having impact.

U.S. laws allow billions of dollars in charitable assets to sit in bank accounts and private foundations. Ray Madoff says it's time to change those laws so that charitiable dollars are put to work tackling society's most pressing problems.

Next time on Tiny Spark: The case for releasing billions of dollars in charitable assets now sitting in banks and private foundations.

In the final segment of Tiny Spark's Guide to Good Giving, Columbia University professor Doug White says before giving to charity, donors should ask key questions of certain people there.

How do you vet solicitors calling on behalf of big name charities? Should we rate charities based on overhead costs? Why is it important to give year-round and not just this holiday? In Part Two of Tiny Spark's Guide to Good Giving, we hear from The Chronicle of Philanthropy's editor Stacy Palmer.

We explore effective altruism, which urges donors to stretch their charitable dollars as far as possible by giving to the world's extreme poor. But aren't families living in our local homeless shelters equally deserving? We dive into the local versus global debate with Charlie Bresler of the nonprofit The Life You Can Save, which guides donors on fighting extreme poverty.

Think people in developing nations are worse off than ever? Steven Radelet says it isn't so. "The biggest misperception is that people are stuck in poverty. That might have been true up until 25 years ago, but the situation has dramatically changed since then." Radlet's new book details the promising news in the fight to end extreme poverty across the globe.

Would you consider giving most of your money to charity? Donate your kidney to a stranger? New Yorker staff writer Larissa MacFarquhar talks extreme altruists.

Quick update to let you know what we're up to.

Anthropologist Amy Brown gives a behind-the-scenes look at the sometimes troubling ways a NYC public school markets its low-income students of color to donors.

Author and anthropologist Amy Brown goes inside a NYC public school and emerges with tough questions about marketing, race and philanthropy.

A Yale and Harvard-trained computer scientist worked for Microsoft in India for several years, trying to see how tech could improve the lives of the world's poor. His conclusion? Computers and smart phones will never solve the world's problems. This former tech evangelist offers some old school ideas for helping us have greater impact.

American communities are still reeling and healing from recent gun violence, including the June mass shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C., and the gang violence that killed 10 people over July 4th weekend in Chicago. But our guests say there is something we can do about gun violence. To get there, we have to stop looking at the problem through a victim/perpetrator lens and begin tackling it at its root, like an infectious disease.

Ugandan-born writer and entrepreneur TMS Ruge challenges the current model of aid intervention. "Just because you're doing something for the poor doesn't mean you're doing it right."

We hear your advice on a moral dilemma involving aid work, plus your reactions to John Paulson's $400M gift to Harvard.

Politico reporter Ken Vogel discovered that the Clinton Foundation has collected as much as $11.7 million in speaker fees from nonprofits. Some argue that celebrity appearances create buzz and more donations for nonprofits, but critics say the high price tags don't produce worthwhile, measurable returns. Do big-name speakers add value to a charity's bottom line or are they just an "empty calorie high?"

A listener poses a moral dilemma regarding aid work; another weighs in on whether the business mindset can improve philanthropy.

Billionaire John Paulson recently gave $400 million to Harvard University. Critics say the money could have done more good elsewhere. Should large donations be scrutinized and debated? Or should we all just be thankful that Paulson is parting with $400 million at all?

How do you figure out exactly what people suffer and die from in every part of the world? Christopher Murray decided to try. His resulting Global Burden of Disease initiative ended up causing controversy among aid groups and large institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations.

Billions of aid dollars were devoted to reconstructing post-earthquake Haiti and fighting Ebola in West Africa. Economist Vijaya Ramachandran and journalist Amy Maxmen tried to track that spending. They found more questions and a lack of transparency.

Graduation season is here, but not all high school seniors are taking the direct route to college. In recent years, some 350 seniors have chosen to put higher education on hold for Global Citizen Year, which offers them year-long apprenticeships in Africa and Latin America. Founder Abby Falik says for most kids in America, college needs to wait.

Abby Falik says high school graduates should immerse themselves in year-long apprenticeships abroad before going to college; Falik's Global Citizen Year is their ticket.

Nepal continues to mourn the thousands who died after a massive earthquake. A global relief effort is now underway to assist more than a million people in need food assistance and other forms of relief. Our guest, Brian Tucker, says responding to crises in this way is shortsighted, costly and poor policy.

Seismologist Brian Tucker says we need to do more than help the victims of natural disasters; we need to prepare vulnerable communities before disaster strikes.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy's Phil Buchanan says nonprofits should push back when the business world says it has the answers to our big social problems.

"Folks sometimes forget that philanthropy is addressing the very problems that have defied market solutions or in some cases are the result of market failure," says Phil Buchanan, President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. But sometimes that is overlooked or underestimated by the start-up world, according to Buchanan. "There's way too much ignorance about the sector," Buchanan tells us. "Particularly given what an important role it has played in this country, and the fact that our nonprofit sector, with all its flaws and all its faults, and all the ways it could be better, is the envy of the world."

A small percentage of the second-hand clothes we donate to charity actually end up on the store shelves of our local Salvation Army or Goodwill, according to our guest Andrew Brooks. Eventually the clothes end up in the hands of for-profit companies, which sell our old t-shirts and jeans to poor people halfway across the globe. Brooks' new book, Clothing Poverty - The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes, describes a multi-billion dollar industry rife with complications and even deceit.

Emily Troutman photographs and writes about people living in poverty across the globe. She's a freelancer and to help pay the bills, Troutman sometimes took lucrative commissions - up to a thousand dollars a day - photographing the work of aid groups. Her two years in post-quake Haiti were no exception. "For most of the freelancers I knew in Port-au-Prince, nonprofit gigs were a lifeline," Troutman writes in her blog Aid.Works. "I never wrote about the organizations I worked for and tried to keep a wall between those two parts of my life." That wall came crashing down earlier this year when USAID announced that it had suspended one of its biggest nonprofit contractors, International Relief and Development, from receiving additional federal contracts. USAID said investigators found "serious misconduct" in IRD's performance and the way it managed taxpayer funds. Troutman was especially disturbed by the allegations because IRD twice paid her to photograph its work in Haiti. "When the IRD scandal blew up, I was looking at my Facebook, I was looking at my Twitter feed, I knew a lot of people who had worked for IRD and nobody said anything," Troutman tells us. She says that silence reflects a larger culture of reticence among aid workers. "Nobody wants to say anything about it because nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds them. That's the problem. These organizations make a lot of money for a lot of people."

Nonprofit advisor Caroline Fiennes has a lot to say about how we assess charities. She used to run one herself. In those days, Fiennes tried figuring out whether her organization was achieving its goals but admits she wasn't always forthcoming about the findings. "When the results were good, we would share them," she tells us. "And when they weren't, we didn't." Fiennes suspects many charities do the same. Fiennes has now made it her mission to improve the quality of data produced by and about nonprofits. "Charities vary markedly in how good they are, so wouldn't it be a good idea if we could figure out which are the good ones, and get people to fund the good ones and to not fund the bad ones? It's hard to make evidence-based decisions if loads of the evidence is either missing, or bad quality, or you can't find it."

Adia Benton spent two years looking at HIV support groups in West Africa. What she saw unsettled her. "It calls into question what international programs like this do to people," she tells us. Benton is an assistant professor of medical anthropology at Brown University and author of the new book, HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone. Internationally funded HIV support groups often urge people to disclose their status. But Benton cautions that not everyone is comfortable going public with their illness. "A lot of it is about fundamental assumptions people make about Africa, which is that it's a community-oriented place where people do everything in the collective and for the collective good. But in fact there are people who are very private, and discretion is very much prized." The public health benefits of disclosure are clear: it reduces stigma and rates of transmission and can help HIV positive people to feel less alone. Even so, Benton found many HIV positive people had mixed feelings about disclosing or did not understand why they had to speak out. "People are very ambivalent about this because they want to contribute to public health but they also want to protect themselves," she says. "It's a difficult juggling act. I heard a lot of people, or leaders, pressuring others to be 'good activists'. They wanted everybody to be a good activist and they wanted everybody to be a good advocate, and not everyone can do that."

Carrboro High School in Carrboro North Carolina is an unlikely meeting place for leaders from the world of international aid and development. But over the years, global studies teacher Matt Cone has given his students face time with an impressive list of guests: from former USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah to Nobel Peace Prize winning economist Mohammed Yunus to First Lady Laura Bush. Most meetings between students and guests have taken place by Skype and speaker phone but last year, Cone's students flew to New York to meet with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. Cone says his students, steeped in issues of economic development and international aid, were "thrilled" to meet Kim, as you can see from this selfie. "I wanted to teach a course where students had access to people who were trying to make a difference in the world," Cone said. "And I thought that if they got something that was different from a fairytale version they might actually become interested in being engaged citizens." It seems to be working. Carrboro students have gone on to work in rural Africa; another, inspired by the work of Paul Farmer, is now pursuing a career in global medicine; a couple more headed off to the Peace Corps. Cone says he feels good about the world when he's with his students. "I feel like they're going to push this thing forward far more than my generation did."

"It's confounding for doctors, for me, when you see that your idea of how a patient is doing is completely wrong, and deadly wrong," says physician Joel Selanikio about his time treating Ebola patients in Lunsar, Sierra Leone. Looking to the future, he is optimistic about bringing down Ebola in West Africa but remains concerned about the bigger picture in the developing world – the broken systems such as government and healthcare. He describes his experiences with Tiny Spark.

Dayo Olopade discusses her new book The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa. The Nigerian-American journalist spent two years traveling across 17 nations in Sub-Saharan Africa. She comes away with a promising view of the continent. "I invite the world to reimagine all of the challenges that you hear about in Africa as an opportunity to innovate."

Nigerian-American journalist Dayo Olopade discusses her new book, The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa.

Diana Jue and Jackie Stenson wanted to figure out a way to bring high-quality products to the world's poor. So, they founded Essmart, a for-profit company that uses India's network of ubiquitous mom-and-pop shops to reach rural consumers.

A veteran humanitarian aid worker offers candid insights into the lessons he's learned - and the personal dilemmas he's faced - during a long career trying to do good across the globe.

Promo: Lessons from an Aid Worker by Tiny Spark

I recently watched a new documentary about inventor Dean Kamen. He's the guy who invented the Segway, that impressive but only moderately successful people mover. Well, Kamen is back with a new invention called the Slingshot; a high tech solution that promises to turn even the dirtiest water into clean drinking water. Given the world's water crisis, you'd think there would be enormous potential for this sort of device. But in the film, Kamen's technology is repeatedly rejected by potential partners, which include the World Bank and United Nations, according to the film's director. Frustrated and out of options, Kamen ends up turning to Coca Cola; a decision that has been met with some criticism. Kamen is quick to defend his partnership with the company, which, he explains in the film, has bottling operations is 206 nations. "That's more than the number of countries that are admitted into the United Nations!" Kamen explains. "We realized if we could partner with them, they could be the link that takes our technology everywhere it needs to be."

We speak to Dean Karlan, Yale economist and co-author of the book More Than Good Intentions. Karlan advocates evidence-based aid and has devoted his career to figuring out which programs work and why.

What Works? The Case for Evidence Based Aid by Tiny Spark

The Soccket: A Follow-Up Investigation by Tiny Spark

This story was originally broadcast on PRI's The World. In the latest installment of our Tracking Charity series, I travel to Senegal to spend time with some community health workers who have been working for a decade without pay. Our story explores the ethics and complexities about payment for volunteers who live in poverty.

Vanity Fair contributing editor, Nina Munk, decided to document a high-profile campaign to end extreme poverty. For six years, she followed celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs' Millennium Villages Project; a five-year campaign designed to eradicate poverty from a dozen African villages. "I thought to myself, if one of the most admired, most respected macro economists in the world believes that we can end poverty in our lifetime, I'm willing to follow him and watch what happens." Munk, a former Fortune magazine writer and Forbes editor, followed Sachs on his official trips to Africa. She visited and revisited two of the Millennium Villages sites, living among the people there, to see how the project was panning out on the ground. At first Munk saw real progress as the cash began flowing in to the villages. But later, she says all kinds of problems began to emerge. "In some ways," she told us, "everything that could go wrong, did go wrong." An interview with Nina Munk about her new book, The Idealist - Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty.

Here's what's up next on Tiny Spark.

Here's the first installment in a new series I'm producing with the public radio program The World. It's a global investigative project called Tracking Charity. In this story, we investigate a promising new technology designed to combat malaria. I visit the Africa nation of Malawi where, a decade on, serious problems are beginning to arise; ones that may have been avoidable. After the story, I speak with The World's host, Marco Werman, about the Tracking Charity series.