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• 27-December-2024
Help US To Protect Childs

Fortunately, we are living in the age of big data: decisions that used to be made on instinct can now be based on solid evidence. In recent years social scientists have begun to marshal the tools of big data to ask the hard questions about what works and what doesnt. The goal is to turn philanthropy into a science, where money gets directed to programs for which there is strong evidence of their effectiveness. I learned about microloans in 1992, on what was supposed to be a short detour from a career in hedge funds. As a 22-year-old intern in El Salvador for one of the largest microlenders, I was struck by how little the organization knew about their effect on clients�usually women�and the local economy. They knew that many customers were coming back for more loans and saw �client retention� as proof of their success. Why else would customers keep borrowing if it was not helping? But the microlenders did not have any serious evidence that the loans were helping women get their families out of poverty. When I asked about evidence on impacts, I was directed to a perfunctory questionnaire. I wondered: maybe repeat borrowing is not good if the clients business does not continue to grow. Perhaps true success would be to provide one loan to help someone in need and then down the road to discover the borrower to be stable enough not to need another.

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