photo source: Candace Thecoco
In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof tells the story of Beatrice Biira who credits her against-the-odds life story to a goat appropriately named Luck.
If I'm trying to extract the lessons from this extremely brief story (I'm still not sure how the dots connect, i.e. how the book helped get Beatrice into a prep school and then college), it would revolve around defining the success of "aid." What is a reliable measurable metric of success, particularly in aid??Beatrice’s story helps address two of the most commonly asked questions about foreign assistance: “Does aid work?” and “What can I do?”
The tale begins in the rolling hills of western Uganda, where Beatrice was born and raised. As a girl, she desperately yearned for an education, but it seemed hopeless: Her parents were peasants who couldn’t afford to send her to school. [...]
I once asked a group of inner-city school teachers how they kept themselves motivated. Surrounded by children in drug and crime infested neighborhoods, and goaded down by disruptive, delinquent parents, I wondered how these women and men stayed positive. They said it started with redefining their metrics of success. Many of them admitted that they had started their jobs with idealistic viewpoints - they would "save" all their students from the streets. This soon downsized to half a class, then to a dozen students, then to two, and one... "and just as you are about to give up, one makes it through...he/she becomes your beacon of hope, your reason for being, your success metric...and you go on until the next one happens." This must be exhausting, I reasoned. "Nah...you get used to it...its all about how you define your success metric. Success to me is just getting a kid to start thinking of a future that doesn't involve this life [of drugs and crime]. If even for a second they can experience that freedom, I know I've succeeded!"
In Heifer's million donations, there have been only a few Beatrices...just as there have been only a few seconds of freedom for the students in this particular inner-city school district. So do we just focus on these few success stories?? Can more be done?? Do you think we are being too hard on "aid"? Should we downsize our metrics of success??
Posts
1 comment:
In your blog you wrote:
"In Heifer's million donations, there have been only a few Beatrices...just as there have been only a few seconds of freedom for the students in this particular inner-city school district. So do we just focus on these few success stories?? Can more be done?? Do you think we are being too hard on "aid"? Should we downsize our metrics of success??"
I think it is valuable to think about aid in the context that the problems of poverty and inequality have been a fundamental feature of human societies and have persisted through many efforts to resolve them. It is one of the most difficult problems that we can choose to work on. At the same time it would clearly be wrong to categorize all past efforts to have failed. Even some of those that have failed by almost any measure have provided information about what doesn't work. The solution of difficult problems often involves more learning from failure than anything else. So success is stitched together from failure. Failures where the lesson isn't perceived are not as useful but in retrospect sometimes clearly contribute to a success. Ultimate failure is when we abandon the problem.
In a larger sense Beatrice is a flash in the pan and not terribly significant. In another way though, those limited success events can be beacons that help to engage everyone in the work. Somebody recently told me that the thing many students get from people like Amy and her classes is that they are able to work at some minute level on this huge problem that otherwise seems unapproachable.
You probably know of this but there is another great TED video by Hans Rosling at: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
Lots of interesting data on development over time.
Post a Comment