I suspect that every aid worker in Africa comes to a time in her career when she wants to take all the money for her project — maybe it's a school or a training program — pack it in a suitcase, get on a plane flying over the poorest villages in the country, and start throwing that money out the window. Because to a veteran aid worker, the idea of putting cold, hard cash into the hands of the poorest people on Earth doesn't sound crazy, it sounds really satisfying.
Pretpostavljam da svaka dobrotvorna radnica u Africi dođe do stadijuma u svojoj karijeri kada želi da uzme sav novac za svoj projekat - možda je u pitanju škola ili program obuke - spakuje ga u torbu, sedne na avion koji leti preko najsiromašnijih sela u državi, i počne da baca taj novac kroz prozor. Jer za veterana dobrotvornog radnika, ideja o stavljanju čistog keša u ruke najsiromašnijih ljudi na planeti ne zvuči suludo, već zadovoljavajuće.
I had that moment right about the 10-year mark, and luckily, that's also when I learned that this idea actually exists, and it might be just what the aid system needs. Economists call it an unconditional cash transfer, and it's exactly that: It's cash given with no strings attached. Governments in developing countries have been doing this for decades, and it's only now, with more evidence and new technology that it's possible to make this a model for delivering aid. It's a pretty simple idea, right?
Doživela sam taj trenutak oko svoje desete godine rada, i srećom, tada sam naučila da ova ideja zapravo postoji, i to je možda upravo ono što sistemu treba. Ekonomisti to zovu nezavisnim prebačajem novca, i to je upravo to: novac dat bez ikakvih obaveza. Vlade u državama u razvoju rade ovo decenijama, i tek sada, sa više dokaza i novom tehnologijom, moguće je napraviti od ovoga model za deljenje pomoći. Prilično je jednostavna ideja, zar ne?
Well, why did I spend a decade doing other stuff for the poor? Honestly, I believed that I could do more good with money for the poor than the poor could do for themselves. I held two assumptions: One, that poor people are poor in part because they're uneducated and don't make good choices; two is that we then need people like me to figure out what they need and get it to them. It turns out, the evidence says otherwise. In recent years, researchers have been studying what happens when we give poor people cash. Dozens of studies show across the board that people use cash transfers to improve their own lives. Pregnant women in Uruguay buy better food and give birth to healthier babies. Sri Lankan men invest in their businesses. Researchers who studied our work in Kenya found that people invested in a range of assets, from livestock to equipment to home improvements, and they saw increases in income from business and farming one year after the cash was sent. None of these studies found that people spend more on drinking or smoking or that people work less. In fact, they work more.
Zašto sam onda provela deceniju radeći druge stvari za siromašne? Iskreno, verovala sam da mogu da učinim više dobrog sa novcem za siromašne nego što siromašni mogu da urade za sebe. Imala sam dve pretpostavke: jedna je da su siromašni ljudi delimično siromašni jer su neobrazovani i ne prave dobre izbore; druga je da su nam potrebni ljudi poput mene da shvate šta im treba i daju im to. Izgleda da dokazi pokazuju suprotno. Poslednjih godina, istraživači su proučavali šta se dešava kada damo novac siromašnim ljudima. Desetine istraživanja uveliko pokazuju da ljudi koriste prebačaj novca da poboljšaju svoje sopstvene živote. Trudnica u Urugvaju kupuje bolju hranu i rađa zdravije bebe. Šrilančani ulažu u svoj posao. Istraživači koji su proučavali naš rad u Keniji su otkrili da su ljudi ulagali u različite resurse, od stoke do opreme i renoviranja u kući, i primetili su povećanja u prihodima od posla i poljoprivrede godinu dana nakon što je novac poslat. Nijedno od ovih istraživanja nije otkrilo da ljudi troše više na piće i duvan ili da ljudi rade manje. Zapravo, rade više.
Now, these are all material needs. In Vietnam, elderly recipients used their cash transfers to pay for coffins. As someone who wonders if Maslow got it wrong, I find this choice to prioritize spiritual needs deeply humbling. I don't know if I would have chosen to give food or equipment or coffins, which begs the question: How good are we at allocating resources on behalf of the poor? Are we worth the cost? Again, we can look at empirical evidence on what happens when we give people stuff of our choosing. One very telling study looked at a program in India that gives livestock to the so-called ultra-poor, and they found that 30 percent of recipients had turned around and sold the livestock they had been given for cash. The real irony is, for every 100 dollars worth of assets this program gave someone, they spent another 99 dollars to do it. What if, instead, we use technology to put cash, whether from aid agencies or from any one of us directly into a poor person's hands. Today, three in four Kenyans use mobile money, which is basically a bank account that can run on any cell phone. A sender can pay a 1.6 percent fee and with the click of a button send money directly to a recipient's account with no intermediaries. Like the technologies that are disrupting industries in our own lives, payments technology in poor countries could disrupt aid. It's spreading so quickly that it's possible to imagine reaching billions of the world's poor this way.
To su sve materijalne potrebe. U Vijetnamu, stariji primaoci su koristili prebačaj novca da bi platili svoje kovčege. Kao neko ko se pita da li je Maslov pogrešio, smatram davanje ovakvog prioriteta duhovnim potrebama veoma poniznim. Ne znam da li bih izabrala da dajem hranu, opremu ili kovčege, što pokreće pitanje: koliko smo dobri u deljenju resursa u ime siromašnih? Da li smo vredni troška? Ponovo, možemo da posmatramo iskustvene dokaze o tome šta se dešava kada dajemo ljudima stvari po našem izboru. Jedno iscrpno istraživanje posmatralo je program u Indiji gde se daje stoka takozvanim "ultrasiromašnima", i otkrili su da se 30 procenata primalaca okrenulo i prodalo stoku koju su dobili za novac. Prava ironija je da su za svako sredstvo vredno 100 dolara koje je ovaj program dao nekome, oni potrošili ostalih 99 dolara da to urade. Šta ako umesto toga koristimo tehnologiju da bismo stavili novac od agencija za pomoć ili bilo koga od nas direktno u ruke siromašne osobe? Danas, tri od četiri Kenijca koriste mobilni novac, koji je zapravo bankovni račun kojim može da se upravlja sa bilo kog mobilnog telefona. Pošiljalac može da plati uslugu transfera od 1,6% i klikom na dugme pošalje novac direktno na račun primaoca bez posrednika. Poput tehnologija koje menjaju privredu u našim životima, tehnologija plaćanja u siromašnim zemljama može da promeni pomoć. Širi se toliko brzo da je moguće zamisliti dostizanje milijarde najsiromašnijih ljudi na svetu na ovaj način.
That's what we've started to do at GiveDirectly. We're the first organization dedicated to providing cash transfers to the poor. We've sent cash to 35,000 people across rural Kenya and Uganda in one-time payments of 1,000 dollars per family. So far, we've looked for the poorest people in the poorest villages, and in this part of the world, they're the ones living in homes made of mud and thatch, not cement and iron. So let's say that's your family. We show up at your door with an Android phone. We'll get your name, take your photo and a photo of your hut and grab the GPS coordinates. That night, we send all the data to the cloud, and each piece gets checked by an independent team using, for one example, satellite images. Then, we'll come back, we'll sell you a basic cell phone if you don't have one already, and a few weeks later, we send money to it. Something that five years ago would have seemed impossible we can now do efficiently and free of corruption.
To smo mi počeli da radimo u "GiveDirectly". Mi smo prva organizacija koja omogućava prebačaj novca siromašnima. Poslali smo novac za 35 000 ljudi širom ruralne Kenije i Ugande u jednostrukim isplatama od 1000 dolara, po porodici. Do sada smo tražili najsiromašnije ljude u najsiromašnijim selima i u ovom delu sveta, to su oni koji žive u kućama od blata i trske, a ne cementa i čelika. Recimo da je to vaša porodica. Mi se pojavimo na vašim vratima sa android telefonom. Uzmemo vaše ime, slikamo vas i vašu brvnaru i uzmemo GPS koordinate. Iste noći, pošaljemo sve podatke u oblak i svaki deo proverava nezavisni tim koristeći, na primer, satelitske snimke. Zatim, mi se vratimo, prodamo vam običan mobilni telefon ako ga već nemate, i nekoliko nedelja kasnije, pošaljemo vam novac na njega. Nešto što je pre pet godina delovalo nemoguće, danas možemo da uradimo efikasno i bez korupcije.
The more cash we give to the poor, and the more evidence we have that it works, the more we have to reconsider everything else we give. Today, the logic behind aid is too often, well, we do at least some good. When we're complacent with that as our bar, when we tell ourselves that giving aid is better than no aid at all, we tend to invest inefficiently, in our own ideas that strike us as innovative, on writing reports, on plane tickets and SUVs. What if the logic was, will we do better than cash given directly? Organizations would have to prove that they're doing more good for the poor than the poor can do for themselves. Of course, giving cash won't create public goods like eradicating disease or building strong institutions, but it could set a higher bar for how we help individual families improve their lives.
Što više novca dajemo siromašnima, i što više dokaza imamo da to funkcioniše, to više moramo da uzmemo u obzir sve ostalo što dajemo. Danas je logika kod pomoći previše često to da činimo makar nešto dobro. Kada smo popustljivi sa time kao svojim standardom, kada kažemo sebi da je davanje pomoći bolje nego ne davati ništa, težimo da ulažemo neefikasno, u sopstvene ideje za koje mislimo da su inovativne, u pisanje izveštaja, u avionske karte i terenska vozila. Šta ako bi logika bila: da li bismo učinili bolje od davanja novca direktno? Organizacije bi trebalo da dokažu da rade više dobrog za siromašne nego što siromašni mogu da urade za sebe. Naravno, davanje novca neće stvoriti javna dobra poput iskorenjivanja bolesti ili građenja jakih institucija, ali bi moglo da postavi viši standard za načine na koji pomažemo porodicama da poboljšaju svoje živote.
I believe in aid. I believe most aid is better than just throwing money out of a plane. I am also absolutely certain that a lot of aid today isn't better than giving directly to the poor. I hope that one day, it will be.
Verujem u pomoć. Verujem da je većina pomoći bolja od običnog bacanja novca iz aviona. Potpuno sam sigurna da većina pomoći danas nije bolja od direktnog davanja novca siromašnima. Nadam se da će biti jednog dana.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)