Practical steps to end poverty

Christian Science Monitor: Practical steps to end poverty

Provided we have the will, where would we begin? How can you help?

San Francisco – In this series, we've unpacked popular myths about extreme poverty. We've looked at how we've gotten stuck. We've laid out some key levers for change. And we've considered the consequences of success. The developed world, well-motivated governments, and civil society among the last billion poor clearly have the means to eliminate extreme poverty in one lifetime.

So, provided we have the will, where would we begin?

We'd start by focusing rich-world financial and technical resources on the worst-off. Today wealthy nations and institutions sprinkle too little public money in too many countries like magic dust. Devoting disproportionate aid funding to countries that don't desperately need it is an ethical failure that should be turned on its head.

We'd make aid transfers to lawless regimes only after specific political, military, and humanitarian milestones were met, not based on promises too often broken. To get more aid directly into the hands of people under the worst governance, we'd spend less on general budget support, more on specific project funding, and far more on individual vouchers redeemable at local markets, aid agencies, and NGOs for food, medicines, visits from health workers, seeds, equipment. …