Filling the Void

Then there is the "lab on a card" project, which promises one day to let health workers in poor nations diagnose the cause of a fever or diarrhea within minutes by injecting a few drops of bodily fluid into a credit-card-sized test kit. Originally funded for defense purposes to address bioterrorism, the technology is perfect for diagnosis in the developing world, which lacks labs with multimillion-dollar equipment and where patients typically can't wait overnight (or days) at a clinic for a diagnosis.

The card employs "microfluidics," which miniaturizes the necessary chemical reactions, making the process both faster and possible with tiny sample amounts. PATH has worked with a company called Micronics Inc., the University of Washington in Seattle, and Washington University in St. Louis to adapt the technology to illnesses common in the developing world and to redesign the card so it can withstand harsh storage and transport conditions. Field trials are expected within two years.

Across the globe, Phalen's BELL program is addressing a market failure of a different sort: a lack of consistent educational support for low-income kids in the United States. What makes the program so successful? Many students stick with it from kindergarten through sixth grade, getting seven years of mentoring, academic support, and exposure to positive role models during critical development years. Volunteer mentors, who include doctors, lawyers, and community leaders, reflect students' own cultural backgrounds. The program divides students into clusters of eight to maximize individual attention. And the screening process for teachers and tutors is extremely rigorous.

The results: All 20 of the students in BELL's first class went on to college. And on a personal level, there are stories like that of Robert Berryman II, a third grader at Mattahunt Middle School outside Boston. Robert has mild autism, as well as attention-deficit disorder and delayed speech skills. He entered the program at BELL two years ago--and in the time since, his father, Robert Sr., has noticed drastic changes.

"He's opened up more," Berryman says. "Before, he wouldn't talk. Now, you have to say, 'Robert, wait a minute please.' " Robert, wearing a bright white polo shirt and a grin, still has some speech troubles, but he is eager to answer questions, looking a visitor directly in the eye. "I like doing homework," he says, adding that his favorite school activity is tackling the narrative "story problems" in math class.

Berryman marvels as he watches his son. "Specialists, they say this isn't the same child," he says.

Crafting Elegant Solutions

Heifer International was founded in 1944 by a former relief worker who began sending milk cows overseas to give hungry people devastated by war a source of ongoing sustenance rather than a handout: "Not a cup, but a cow" was the idea. In the more than 60 years since, it has evolved into a powerful, integrated, and rapidly growing development model that promotes ecologically sound agricultural strategy, poverty alleviation, and gender equity in 50 countries by giving families livestock (or the means to buy it) and teaching them how to use that gift to enhance their livelihoods.

Key to Heifer's success is the requirement that each family "pass on the gift" by giving the offspring of an animal to another needy family. On average, that gift is passed on for more than six livestock generations, helping lift entire communities out of poverty, says Tom Peterson, Heifer's vice president of communications and marketing. "We visited a village in Mexico in the mid-1990s where Heifer had done some work a decade earlier," he recalls. "And this community was still passing on the gift. We met the man who had been given the original cow, and by then, he had 17 cows and a small dairy-farm business."

Before any project begins, or any animal or seed is donated, Heifer first requires a proposal from a group that already has organized for change. When floods caused by El Ni–o wiped out crops near the Portoviejo River valley in northwest Ecuador in 1998, Emilio Posligua Salvatierra and others from his community needed aid to rebuild. But the group had to conceive a plan and get the community to support it.

Posligua Salvatierra, then 25, admits that "at first, not everyone wanted to be involved. Many thought we were crazy." You can hardly blame them. The plan included unfamiliar ideas such as the implementation of "geomembranes," a woven mesh designed to prevent land erosion. Plus, as with all new projects, Heifer mandated that aid recipients agree to farm organically and commit to community improvement. Seven years later, though, Posligua Salvatierra's organization has grown to include 250 families and offers literacy programs and health seminars in addition to technical training on farming.