Between 2/10 and 2/23, I visited two of our recommended charities: The Small Enterprise Foundation (our top-rated microfinance organization and one of two winners of our recent Economic Empowerment Grant – note that our review is not yet available but has been drafted and will be published shortly) and VillageReach (our current top-rated charity overall).

(Note that the posts I authored on our self-review and plan, which ran while I was away, were all written and scheduled before I left.)

This trip was my first time in Africa; it was also an opportunity to have more in-depth conversations with the staff of these two charities (going beyond our usual key questions about cost-effectiveness, evidence of impact and room for more funding). In future posts, I’ll be sharing some thoughts I came away with.

For now, we’ve posted as much as possible of the “raw data” from my trip: pictures, video, and audio. I recorded most interviews with clients and staff and took pictures of most of what I saw. We’ve also included summary notes of each “episode” with the pictures/video/audio. You can see it all at this link: