Ever since I heard about the Grameen Foundation’s Village Phone program, I’ve been optimistic. The program involves helping people in remote villages run pay-for-use cellphone services: they get their cellphone, and a loan to buy it, via Grameen, then charge other villagers to use it. It’s an approach to fighting poverty that’s (a) relatively new;…
The GiveWell Blog
All Why good giving is hard Posts
Helping farmers is harder than you’ve heard
Imagine that a charity is able to teach a farmer some basic, useful things about farming (like “crop rotation, dip irrigation and the planting of trees that enrich over worked soil” or “disease-resistant cassava replication, distribution and sale; crop diversification; soil conservation; and expanding market opportunities”). Such simple knowledge could last the farmer forever and…