Latest news with #GiveDirectly
Daily Mail
24-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: UK cash meant to combat climate change in Malawi funds loan sharks and helps men to dump their wives
Hard-pressed British taxpayers funding a £4.5 million scheme to alleviate climate change in Malawi are instead setting up locals as loan sharks and paying for the illegal migration of others to a better life in South Africa, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. About 8,800 villagers around Chikwawa in Malawi are receiving the equivalent of £433 each – and the Foreign Office insists the best way to send the money is directly to each of them. They even give each recipient a mobile phone to facilitate the online transfer. The hope is they will use the windfall to 'reduce the impact of climate extremes' through stronger homes, better farming practices and improved communications. Officials claim financial and business training will help 'beneficiaries make informed choices on what is likely to be the largest amount of cash they have ever seen'. But the Foreign Office explicitly leaves it up to them to decide how to spend the windfall, which is distributed through its partner GiveDirectly – known to villagers as 'Givie'. It is a fabulous sum in a poverty-stricken country where 70 per cent live on just £1.60 a day – and the MoS can reveal much of the money is squandered. The two-year Chikwawa project is part of a ramping-up of UK overseas aid for climate resilience with 'at least £1.5 billion' spent in 2024-25, according to the Foreign Office. It defends the cash transfers, and says it monitors all programmes to ensure 'value for money for the British taxpayer'. In the village of Mwanaakula, Henry Maliko, 26, said he was buying iron sheets for his small mud hut as part of the scheme. But he has also found 'a creative way of investing the rest of the money by becoming a money lender'. Mr Maliko explained: 'Some people who are yet to receive their money have been coming to ask for loans and offering to pay me back double the amount. 'People here lack many things. They have no patience to wait for their money to arrive so they go to those who have received theirs and ask for loans.' Madame Mwanaakula, the female 'headman', who by tradition takes the name of the village, told the MoS: 'There's been plenty of young men who have gone to South Africa after receiving money from Givie. 'It helps them get a passport quickly, throw backhanders to government agents, pay for transport and accommodation and find a job on the black economy so as to send money home.' The trend has left 21-year-old Triza Piterson to await the birth of her first child alone. She confirmed her husband used his money to bribe officials, obtain a passport and travel to South Africa in search of work. Without a visa – unlikely to be granted to an unskilled foreigner – he is there as an illegal immigrant. She says she is confident he will come back eventually. And Ruth Harold, 32, said her husband Essau walked out on her and their two children, aged five and four, within days of receiving his cash. He has since set up home with another woman. Essau says he left because she got her payment before him, and her personality changed. He said: 'She became rude after she got her money'. Last night, Tory MPs called for an urgent investigation into the project. Sir John Hayes, chairman of the Tories' Common Sense Group at Westminster, said: 'A great nation should have a big heart and helping those in the greatest need has been a characteristic of our great nation. 'However, making sure that money that is spent delivers on the objectives requires proper oversight and management. 'The reason so many people have doubts about overseas aid is that money is misspent and wasted. 'This project needs to be investigated very quickly as a result of The Mail on Sunday's investigation.' The Malawi project was approved under the last Conservative government in April last year. It took effect after Labour came to power with the first cash payments made six months later. The Foreign Office's 'business case', signed off by the British High Commissioner to Malawi, Fiona Ritchie, argues that there is 'a large amount of evidence on the effectiveness and efficiency of cash transfers'. A spokesman for GiveDirectly said: 'Anecdotes are a poor way to judge the effectiveness of aid programmes. Independently run randomised control trials objectively prove direct cash assistance reduces extreme poverty and builds long-term resilience.' But John O'Connell, chief executive at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'This is a damning example of UK taxpayers' money being sprayed abroad with no accountability and little to show for it. Ministers need to get a grip.'
Time Magazine
20-05-2025
- Business
- Time Magazine
Nick Allardice
GiveDirectly was already one of the world's largest providers of unconditional cash transfers to people living in extreme poverty when Nick Allardice, former head of the grassroots organizing platform came on as president and CEO last year. Now, under Allardice's leadership, the nonprofit is undertaking its most ambitious projects yet—despite a $20 million hit to funding because of USAID cuts. 'We're leaning more into humanitarian work now because cash can be uniquely powerful when all the other supply chains are super disrupted,' Allardice says. In the U.S., GiveDirectly's Rx Kids initiative is expanding to more than a dozen communities, after an initial program in Flint, Mich. showed promising improvements to participants' health and financial security. The program provides poor expectant mothers with $1,500 during pregnancy and $500 a month for up to a year after the child's birth. Other new initiatives include a pilot program in Nigeria testing anticipatory aid, sending money to people before a flood hits; another uses phone location data in the Democratic Republic of Congo to spot and send cash payments to people fleeing violence—cutting a typical 130-day wait for relief to five days. Allardice's biggest bet: a program in Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, to test 'whether it's possible to catalyze an entire country out of poverty simultaneously.' To find out, GiveDirectly will send 200,000 adults in one region $550 each over the next 18 months in its largest-ever cash program. 'The world needs more moonshots,' Allardice says.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nick Allardice
Credit - Courtesy Allardice GiveDirectly was already one of the world's largest providers of unconditional cash transfers to people living in extreme poverty when Nick Allardice, former head of the grassroots organizing platform came on as president and CEO last year. Now, under Allardice's leadership, the nonprofit is undertaking its most ambitious projects yet—despite a $20 million hit to funding because of USAID cuts. 'We're leaning more into humanitarian work now because cash can be uniquely powerful when all the other supply chains are super disrupted,' Allardice says. In the U.S., GiveDirectly's Rx Kids initiative is expanding to more than a dozen communities, after an initial program in Flint, Mich. showed promising improvements to participants' health and financial security. The program provides poor expectant mothers with $1,500 during pregnancy and $500 a month for up to a year after the child's birth. Other new initiatives include a pilot program in Nigeria testing anticipatory aid, sending money to people before a flood hits; another uses phone location data in the Democratic Republic of Congo to spot and send cash payments to people fleeing violence—cutting a typical 130-day wait for relief to five days. Allardice's biggest bet: a program in Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries, to test 'whether it's possible to catalyze an entire country out of poverty simultaneously.' To find out, GiveDirectly will send 200,000 adults in one region $550 each over the next 18 months in its largest-ever cash program. 'The world needs more moonshots,' Allardice says. Write to Kerri Anne Renzulli at
Washington Post
19-05-2025
- Health
- Washington Post
Here's where Bill Gates can donate part of his fortune: Moms
Mona Hanna, the founder and director of Rx Kids, is a pediatrician and associate dean of public health at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine in Flint, Michigan. Miriam Laker-Oketta, senior research adviser to GiveDirectly, is a medical doctor and researcher. Bill Gates recently pledged to give away nearly all his $200 billion in wealth by 2045, aspiring to have no mom, child or baby die from a preventable cause. As two physicians — one in Michigan, one in Uganda — we know accomplishing such a bold goal will require a powerful but overlooked tool: giving mothers cash.
eNCA
15-05-2025
- Business
- eNCA
Can cash handouts replace aid? Kenya offers some answers
NAIROBI - Three years ago, Thomas Kazungu Karisa was struggling to make ends meet as a petrol station attendant in the Kenyan county of Kilifi, when a sudden cash donation changed his life. "My family often went to bed hungry, my children were sent home from school for unpaid fees and I was buried in debt," said Karisa, a father of five. Now he beams at his lush farm blooming with okra, the result of a one-off donation of 110,000 Kenyan shillings (roughly $930 at the time) from a New York-based NGO, GiveDirectly. He used the cash to lease a plot of land with two neighbours in his village of Milore, install an irrigation system and start farming. He built up credit and bought two cows, as well as a chainsaw he rents out for 2,000 Kenyan shillings at a time. "If they had given me food, it would have been long gone by now," Karisa told AFP. "But with the money, I have been able to change my life." AFP | Tony KARUMBA GiveDirectly believes charities and NGOs should stop handing out things like food and school books, and start just sending people cash. It has given donations to almost 1.5 million Africans, and has carried out 25 studies across the continent to measure the impact. Fears the money would be misused or wasted were unfounded, it said. One Kenyan study found that families generated $2.50 for every $1 received. "We can show evidence of cash having reversed domestic violence, improved child mortality, improved business outcomes, made families healthier, children accessing more education," said Caroline Teti, GiveDirectly's vice president for risk in Africa. - 'Poverty doesn't wait' - With the United States and other Western countries sharply cutting aid in recent months, GiveDirectly believes cash handouts offer a way to do more with less. Traditional aid systems spend vast amounts on planning, supplies, transport, offices and expensive Western staff. A 2022 study by the University of Washington found that back-office costs in the United States ate up 30 to 60 percent of budgets for global health projects. Much more was lost getting supplies to the final endpoint. GiveDirectly still has overhead costs, but says 80 percent of donations goes directly into the hands of recipients. "Cash is not a magic bullet," Teti said. Governments are still needed for fundamentals like schools, health facilities and electricity. AFP | Tony KARUMBA But for improving the livelihoods of the poor, cash can be effective and fast. "Poverty doesn't wait," Teti said. "One year is enough for a girl to drop out of school... for a mother or child to die." Other aid agencies have embraced the concept over the past 10-15 years as hundreds of studies have shown its efficacy. The Norwegian Refugee Council now gives 20 percent of its aid in cash, but could easily give as much as 45 percent, said Tariq Riebl, its strategy and innovation director. Even USAID -- before being gutted by the administration of President Donald Trump -- finally backed the use of cash payments in a policy paper last October, after years of internal pushback. The only real obstacle, Riebl told AFP, is "latent conservatism" in the aid sector: "There's something more comforting about handing over a kit of non-food items or a sack of rice, than giving cash." - 'Dilemma' - Cash is not suitable everywhere, such as war zones where markets barely exist, or when specialist items are needed like ID cards for refugees, or HIV medication. Doctors Without Borders (MSF), a medical organisation, has twice used cash transfers when markets collapsed: in Syria in the mid-2010s and recently in Sudan's Darfur region. But they were exceptions. "Cash for healthcare remains very rare," said MSF's advocacy head, Tarak Bach Baouab. "We want to be sure of the quality of our programmes so we prefer sourcing the drugs and equipment ourselves." Nonetheless, there is a dilemma. AFP | Luis TATO "We're not there to tell people what to do with their lives. It's not very empowering and it creates a lot of dependency," Baouab said. "But if you give cash to a family and they don't spend it in the right way, then we might see health outcomes diminish." GiveDirectly sees this as a selling point for giving cash wherever possible. "Lives can only be changed by the people who are living that life," Teti said. "We are giving them dignity and we are giving them choice."
