Zimbabwe introduces cash transfer scheme Global development news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk Education assistance and child protection and cash transfers at core of national action plan for orphans and vulnerable children Zimbabwe has launched a $75m plan to protect orphans and vulnerable children over the next three years. The money will come from the Zimbabwean government and donors, including the UK, the European Commission and the UN children's agency, Unicef. Some $45m of the money for a child protection fund has been raised from donors, leaving a $30m shortfall that will need to be covered before full national coverage can be ensured. The scheme is part of a national action plan for orphans and vulnerable children that involves education assistance, child protection and cash transfers to the poorest families. Cash transfers have been tried with some success in Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. Zimbabwe is the latest country to adopt th...
We Should Expect Good Giving To Be Hard SSIR Opinion & Analysis Great giving opportunities are few and far between; rather than offering to help donors "check the legitimacy" of particular groups, I believe in urging them to give to only the very best charities. In fact, it's fundamentally very difficult for an individual donor to meaningfully help people. When you want to help people as a donor, you have to get in line behind all of the groups below. For-profit companies. I believe that most of the things you can do that make strangers' lives better are things you can get paid for. Every day people help each other send packages, prepare food, recover from illness, etc. via market transactions. This may seem like a trivial and obvious point, but it's the reason we are so focused on helping the very poor. When you're trying to help people who aren't poor, you're competing with for-profit enterprises. And even the very ...
Will the Post-2015 report make a difference? Depends what happens next From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green An edited version of this piece, written with Stephen Hale , appeared on the Guardian Poverty Matters site on Friday Reading the report of the High Level Panel induces a sense of giddy optimism. It is a manifesto for a (much) better world, taking the best of the Millennium Development Goals, and adding what we have learned in the intervening years – the importance of social protection, sustainability, ending conflict, tackling the deepest pockets of poverty, even obesity (rapidly rising in many poor countries). It has a big idea ( consigning absolute poverty to the history books ) and is on occasion brave (in the Sir Humphrey sense ) for example in its commitment to women's rights, including ending child marriage and violence against women, and guaranteeing universal sexual and reproductive health rights. The ambition and optimism is all the mo...