Today's Washington Post

Brick kiln workers in Pakistan.

The Unknown is Real

What did you do for work today? I sat in front of a computer. For about two and a half hours, on and off, I surfed the internet. For about four hours, I transcribed polling data from the 2006 Brazilian presidential elections. Typing, that is. I will be paid about $65 for my trouble. I feel good--no soreness.

Low-Hanging Fruit

Become a statistic! In case you like writing letters to elected officials to have them tabulated by interns to be summarized in reports which may or may not influence the mind of said official: the Congo Conflict Minerals Act would require electronics companies to disclose how much tantalum, tin, and tungsten they get from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Write your senator. Different rebel groups in the DRC control access to these mines, taxing miners to fuel their militias. Sound familiar? Also, in a topic more related to our previous reading, the Obama administration is considering granting Temporary Protected Status to Haitians living in the United States. TPS would effectively legalize undocumented Haitians. Write the White House and tell them that allowing Haitians to stay in the United States and earn money is the least our country could do in these hard times after centuries of bigoted and oppressive policies toward Haiti that contributed to the present flow of migrants.

We Struggle So Hard For Each Breath That We Take

So, I recently read Elizabeth Pisani's excellent book The Wisdom of Whores, in which she spends a good deal of time talking about how she and her colleagues did a bang-up job of snookering donor countries into adequately funding AIDS programs, and then, despite their good intentions, failed to spend that money on programs that actually lowered the incidence of HIV/AIDS. So, when I was browsing through a site I've linked to before, GiveWell, this page stood out to me. They give their top rating to exactly four out of 136 charities they've rated:

We believe charities that are truly and reliably changing lives are the exception, not the rule.

Some of the heavy-hitters they list as "Not Recommended" include UNICEF, World Vision, and the Grameen Foundation. To be clear, I don't think this means that those organizations do no good work. But it does mean 1) there's a good chance the work they're doing is having no effect 2) there's a good chance that some of their work is having a negative effect 3) there's a very good chance no one knows if certain programs work 4) should we be in a position to provide help or money to someone near or far, we should not be surprised if we make a hash of it, and should simply try to learn from our mistakes.

Busted.

Guilty as charged.

Slavery

I will be updating this list as I find more. For now:

Child-fisherman in Ghana

Niger

American contractor in Iraq

Dubai

Southeast Asian Carpets

Asian shrimp suppliers

Marriage markets in India

92% of Brazilian forest steel exported to the US

Maids in Lebanon

Child silk weavers in India

Chocolate in West Africa

Tomatoes in Florida

Haitian Cane-Cutters in the DR

Bolivians in an Argentine sweatshop

Restavek

A link between our last book and our next one.

Friendship Park (and a note on politics)

(NOTE: What follows is an endorsement of legislation in the US Congress. That would make this a political endorsement, although that a political statement is not my intent. We haven't really discussed immigration yet, and I realize there are diverse and strongly-held views as to what is the most just immigration policy. If you think I've unwisely given cover to a destructive and unjust approach, I'll give rebuttals their own post. If at any time, you feel that this blog or our book club is being unduly influenced by prevailing political winds, rather than creating them, please speak up and voice your displeasure. I've always hated any appearance of church sanction for political parties or politicians. At the same time, I the issues we are discussing in these books, the conclusions we will draw, and (I pray) the actions we will take are going to strike many observers as sideways politics. If they don't, there's a good chance we've missed something. I highly recommend these two messages on Jesus and politics, and this one on immigration, from previous Tough Questions series at Coast.)

Last Sunday, Kristine said that, although Friendship Park has been shut down, that increasing pressure might force the Border Patrol to rescind its decision and reopen the park. At this point, much of it has been torn up, so it might take some money. Just today, then, I was pleased to read that Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona has introduced legislation that would

1. Require the Department of Homeland Security to consult with federal land managers and state, local, and tribal governments in creating a Border Protection Strategy that supports border security efforts while also protecting federal and tribal lands.

2. Provide for flexibility, rather than a “one size fits all” approach, to border security by allowing experts at DHS to decide upon best strategies for border security.

3. Allow land managers, local officials, and local communities to have a say in border security decisions, requiring full public notice and participation.

4. Ensure that laws intended to protect air, water, wildlife, culture, and health and safety are fully upheld. "

While Friendship Park is not specifically mentioned, it could be if our elected representatives hear enough about it. Write your representative and urge them to legislate the reopening of Friendship Park. Post your drop in the bucket in the comments!

2nd Meeting Recap

Our next meeting will be a movie night on Saturday, May 9th, location TBA. I will let you know which book we are reading next when I send out the email for that event. For those of you who missed our last meeting, we reflected on the passage from pages 243-244 that I posted earlier, and discussed how we might apply some of the ideas from MBM. We raised the possibility of getting involved in some sort of service work together, whether through ministries already in place at Coast or through NGOs in the community. If you'd be interested in doing this, and you weren't there on Sunday, let me know.

Also, a lot of people mentioned events and organizations others might be interested in. Kristine urged us to write letters to reverse the DHS decision to close Friendship Park. More information is available at the Friends of Friendship Park website. Becky invited us all to the Cultivating Food Justice conference to be held here on May 1st and 2nd. Jess digs Chicano Park Day, and thinks you should check it out this weekend. She is also friends with the founder of Hope Through Health, who provide health care to Togolese regardless of their ability to pay, along the lines of the PIH model. If you didn't get to give on Sunday and would like to, consider HTH!

Finally, for those with an inkling to work internationally, I'd like to pass along a link to Chris Blattman's blog. Check out the 'Advice' links on the left sidebar.

The Life You Can Save

Alright, just one last Peter Singer reference! In this Bloggingheads, George Mason economist Tyler Cowen grills Peter Singer on what the best way might be to improve the lives of the poor. For those of you in the original Lazarus group, you already know Peter Singer's line of argument. Two things that especially jumped out at me: 1) at around 3:15, you'll notice Cowen completely stumps singer on question on immigration and development. What in one experts opinion is the best way to combat poverty isn't even on the others radar! 2) Cowen (I forget where) suggests simply wiring money to poor people we've met on our travels. It's strange, because its just not something I would have given myself permission to do before. This is a bit of a sore spot for me (I have a tremendous story of being ripped off in my first four days in Egypt), since it really reminds me of how easy it is for me to get around, and how easy it is for me to "extract" things from other places without meaning to. It's kind of stunning how I often think of the international poor as billions of people who just want to send me a fraudulent email. Anyway, hopefully more comments on this later.

If Paul is the model, we're golden...

In case you missed it, on page 244. I think this also dovetails nicely with Michelle's comment:

... This was a direct quote from Jim, a characteristically emphatic phrase, which sounded harsher than it was. Jim meant it as a warning to the many young PIH-ers who imagined, as many had and many would, that the right thing to do with their lives was to imitate Paul. To Jim, attempts at imitation would put the emphasis where it didn't belong. The goal was to improve the lives of others, not oneself. "It's not about the quest for personal efficacy," as Paul himself liked to say. Besides, frank imitations would fail. What PIH-ers should take from Paul wasn't a manual fro their own lives but the proofs he'd created that seemingly intractable problems could be solved. "Paul has created technical solutions to help the rest of us get to decency, a road map to decency that we can all follow without trying to imitate him," Jim told me, explaining the message on the wall. "Paul is a model of what should be done. He's not a model for how it has to be done. Let's celebrate him. Let's make sure people are inspired by him. But we can't say anybody should or could be just like him." He added, "Because if the poor have to wait for a lot of people like Paul to come along before they get good health care, they are totally f---ed."

Eyes On The Prize

Some of you know that I spent a year in Cairo, where I took a class from Barbara Harrell-Bond, a dedicated advocate for refugees with a skeptical attitude on the efficacy of UNHCR and other large aid organizations. Just a few days ago, William Dowell of the Global Post wrote on UNHCR's continuing troubles, including this bit:

In a landmark study of the UNHCR’s organizational culture released shortly after Guterres became High Commissioner in 2005, an external consultant, Barbara Wigley, notes that the UNHCR has two basic objectives: the protection of refugees, and the protection of its own existence. It follows that as money becomes tighter and staffers face uncertainty about their own future; the instinct for self-preservation becomes more intense.

Two points on this. First, stuff like this is why criticisms of aid have some traction and why we need to be responsible with who we give to. In this article, we learn, for example, that UNHCR is paying $30 million a year to "staff in between assignments"—basically dead weight that bureaucratic rules prevent them from firing. Second, it is always good to remember that no organization, no church, is immune to the tendency toward an introverted inertia. Of PIH, we learn that as it grew, it "was trying to accommodate newcomers, trying ... to 'normalize' the experience ... it was okay to have children, to go home some days at five o'clock, to take a vacation" (p. 243). One of the things I love about Mountains, though, is that it reminds me that monomaniacal pursuit is a frequently developed theme in the Bible. Self-preservation, on the other hand, does not get such a ringing endorsement. I do not know at what point Jesus' exhortations to his followers become unworkable at a systemic scale, so I'm not sure this is really good operating advice for an international bureaucracy.

Anyway, I guess my next point will be on hypocrisy and unironic bluster. What say you?

All of These Words

St. Nicholas Kristof reports on an NGO called SOIL turns human waste into fertilizer in Port-au-Prince. Kristof writes, "Frankly, I was taken aback when, 10 minutes after they had met me, they pulled out a Ziploc bag and proudly declared that it was compost made from their own toilet." Beauty from ashes?

Margaret sent me a link to this MSNBC article that reports being a mother in Haiti is dangerous business. This reminded me that although Mountains focuses mainly on delivering health care to the poor, there are other professions and skilled intimately involved in promoting justice. Female literacy, for example is a key factor (more so than male literacy) in improving the quality of life of women and their families.

Finally, a more recent article focusing on the work PIH is doing in Rwanda, and a few bits about Farmer's family life, which may or may not placate some of your concerns.

Efficiency and Compassion

The first time I read Mountains, I was so overwhelmed by Paul Farmer's biography that I just couldn't imagine any other way to work for the global poor other than being a jet-setting, Ivy-League-trained doctor-anthropologist. My mind was thrilled at the idea of a person operating at maximum efficiency, getting, as it were, as many lives-saved-per-minute as his machine could possibly handle. When I evaluated my own my life in those terms, it felt pretty suboptimal. But upon rereading the book, I see that not everyone agreed with my overawed assessment of Farmer's time management. One of his academic overseer thought Paul Farmer was wasting time by treating individual patients instead of focusing systemic problems:

Farmer, [Harvard Professor Howard] Hiatt seemed to say, should be solely engaged in the battle against those scourges, and at a level commensurate with their size. 'The six months a year that Paul's looking after patients one-on-one in Haiti, if that time were converted to a major program for treating prisoners with TB in Russia and other easter European countries or malaria around the world, or AIDS in southern Africa—it doesn't matter where or what because you know he'll do important things. Because look at what he's done with only part of his time on MDR. Look what he's done with his skills and political acumen!' (181)

But what Professor Hiatt saw as a tragic inefficiency ("if that time time were converted," as if our lives were simple arithmetic), Farmer regards as the lynchpin of his work (see his list of priorities in the second paragraph of p. 182). Had I been in Hiatt's position, I would have made the same criticism. Had I been in Judas' position, I also would have demanded to know why Mary had wasted such a fortune in an ostentatious emotional display. And had I been at that meeting of top TB policy makers, I would have probably nodded my headed and smirked smugly when a Russian TB director insisted, "I only have six million dollars" to implement this program (p. 161). One of the most astonishing takeaways from Mountains for me, then, is to see the way that a certain compassion for the people and situation immediately before you yields long-term results. This kind of compassion is repeated not just by Paul Farmer but throughout PIH (in Jim Kim's refusal to give up on MDR-TB patients, and the astonishing story of John, the Haitian boy nasopharyngal carcinoma, and Serena, in Chapter 25). I have often questioned the church's seemingly imprudent affection for "small" problems that I felt promoted more egoism than compassion. But here are a group of people admire, at a "secular" organization, doing exactly as Jesus did, for the reason he did it, in the way he did it: addressing people's immediate needs, in a rash of compassion, inadvisedly. It echoes Mother Teresa's maxim about "small acts of great love," an impulse I've always struggled to effect.

Floresta launches Plant with Purpose

Hey Fellow Book Clubbers and Floresta supporters,

Floresta is launching a new initiative called Plant With Purpose to reach the younger, more digital generation. Our new, interactive website just went live this morning!! You can see it now at www.PlantWithPurpose.org. This new online community offers a closer connection with nearly 200 villages being served worldwide. On the website, you will be able to step inside the regions where we work and view their specific needs firsthand. And, for every reoccurring donation, the amount will be matched for a year!

Not only are we launching the new website, we're also launching a new video. This short video helps explain the connection between poverty and the environment. I'd encourage you to share the video with your friends, family and co-workers to help spread the word about the great work Plant With Purpose will accomplish for Floresta.

You can also keep up with all the latest news on Plant With Purpose by joining our causes online. Follow us on Twitter, join our Facebook cause or MySpace group, and read our Plant With Purpose blog.

We are very excited about this initiative, and hope you will be, too!

Not For Sale, Free2Work, and just spending

Not For Sale author David Bastone will be giving a talk at Point Loma University on Wednesday April 1 at 7 PM. Check out the Not For Sale Campaign website; there's a bunch of news items on the left on human trafficking and sex slavery.

It looks like the Not for Sale Campaign has also started a complementary organization, Free2Work. And here's where things get interesting for you chocolate lovers. During the first part of the LATG study, we committed to do four things with our money: be thankful for it, spend less, spend justly, and give more. We learned that, much to our chagrin, some of our favorite foods have a less than savory history. In our effort to spend more justly, we found it was relatively easy to find Fair Trade coffee. But Fair Trade chocolate is a good bit harder to find, and usually much more expensive. Earlier this month, however, Cadbury, one of the world's largest confection companies, pledged to certify all their milk chocolate as Fair Trade by the end of this year.

Through this single decision Cadbury has increased the amount of Certified Fair Trade Chocolate sold by three fold.

Neat!

It's World TB Day

I swear I didn't plan it this way. Just in case you thought Paul Farmer was some loony idealist like that TB doctor from that one episode of House, reports from all over the world on World TB Day remind us that that Gregory House is the crazy one, not the TB doctor. (But you already knew that.) TB is a serious global issue. What's more, we're learning that TB itself is symptomatic of deeper social diseases, which you don't have to be a doctor to diagnose.

It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks

At yesterday's meeting, I read a small quote from an interview with Tracy Kidder at the Random House website, and I think it's worth quoting at length:

One of my favorite characters in this book is a woman named Ophelia Dahl. She met Paul Farmer when she was 18 and he was 23. She told me that she remembered, from many years ago, deciding that Farmer was an important person to believe in. Not as a figure to watch from a distance, thinking, Oh, look, there is good in the world. Not as a comforting example, but the opposite. As proof that it was possible to put up a fight. As a goad to make others realize that if people could be kept from dying unnecessarily — from what Haitians call “stupid deaths” — then one had to act. I don’t plan to give away all my worldly goods and go to work with Farmer in Haiti. For one thing, I’d just get in the way. But I can’t tell myself anymore that the great problems of the world, such as the AIDS and TB epidemics, are beyond all hope of amelioration, or of repair. In other words, I don’t think I can feel comfortable anymore in this world, by resigning myself to despair on behalf of billions of other people. There’s always something one can do. It’s not my place to make a fund-raising pitch for Farmer and his organization, Partners In Health. Well, actually, I don’t know why it isn’t my place. I happened onto something remarkable and I sat down to try to describe it to others. I hope what I’ve written is artful. I believe it is at least accurate and truthful. And one true fact is that Farmer’s organization, Partners In Health, represents a real antidote to despair. [...] A donation to Partners In Health of, say, $200 will save an impoverished Haitian from dying a horrible death from tuberculosis.

I think reading this book is, in some sense, being in Ophelia Dahl's shoes (and Tracy Kidder's). It seems easy to be overwhelmed by Paul Farmer's person, but I think the more important part of this book and Paul Farmer's life isn't Paul Farmer, but the truth outside him. As it happens, writing a biography of Paul Farmer is a good way of illuminating some oft-ignored truths that exist independent of him: about what it means to be poor in this world, about Haiti and stark historical injustices, about sickness and 'the great epi divide'. I should hope that at some point, anyone talking about me could not do it without talking about some vital truth.

I was pleased with out discussion on Sunday and I hope you all felt the same way. Feel free to email me or post any suggestions or other info you find interesting. Those of you reading other Farmer-related material, earmark especially tasty bits.

Guns, germs, or steel?

An economist finds that malaria is much more statistically significant in predicting underdevelopment in Africa than colonialism or the intensity of the slave trade. As the author says at the end of the paper, it doesn't mean those other things aren't important, but findings like these should remind us why infectious disease and public health are such a big deal.

(via Marginal Revolution)

You > The Government

It seems like citizens of the world are incessantly demanding that rich countries budget more for foreign development aid. Indeed, countries like the United States give miserly percentages of their income as foreign aid. Plus, it's hard to feel like one small gift can make a difference. But remember that most of the world's aid comes from private sources, and money from private sources allows NGOs more flexibility in emergencies.

Peter Singer

You remember Peter Singer, the utilitarian ninja who seemed poised to sink our listing hearts before we'd even really started? I don't remember a great deal of affection at our first meeting for Singer's pitch, but I think we agreed with him that we have to do something. Singer has recently extended his ideas on giving into a book, but Bill Easterly is unimpressed. He writes:

Unfortunately, there are several differences between these two situations. The most important is that you know exactly what to do to save the child, whereas it is not at all clear that you (or anyone else) knows exactly what to do to save the lives of poor children or how to get them out of extreme poverty. Another difference is that you are the one acting directly to save the drowning child, whereas there are multiple intermediaries between you and the poor child — an international charity, an official aid agency, a government, a local aid worker.

I think that using the excuse that institutions are not 100% efficient is a major dodge. Certainly, there are some massive inefficiencies at some of the world's largest charities. But if giving money is like paying, say, $10 for an 85% of chance of saving someone's life (or giving them some food, or medicine, or shelter), that's still a bet we should take every time!

At the same time, it is certainly true that some of the world's most prominent aid organizations often do not act in the interest of their constituents, or betray some destructive institutional conceit. Although I don't think it was Tracy Kidder's explicit intent in writing the book, I think one of its great strengths is the numerous places where we learn what makes a highly effective service provider. I think many of these traits are common sense that are difficult to institutionalize, and maybe even harder to identify for those of us on the outside, the potential donors. But things like a patient/client/constituent/others-first ethic ("You can't sympathize with the staff too much or you risk not sympathizing with the patients," p.20) are the things that make an aid organization effective.

What are the things you look for in an organization when you give money? Can we compare churches to international or domestic NGOs?

Blog?

Hello LATGers!

It is my sincere desire that this book club not flop, and I thought a blog might encourage some of us to keep reading and give us a place to air thoughts about the book, or share information with the rest of the group. If anyone wants to post anything, let me know.