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No one expects that type of aid to permanently lift people out of poverty. So it would be enough for this experiment to show that just giving poor people cash is more efficient and effective.
"Let them make the choices," says Faye. "Because the poor are pretty good at making them."
Only they can know the damage that poverty does to each individual. And it's not just the tangible deprivations.
For Odero, what poverty really stole from him was his dignity. And the couch set is what has given it back. He no longer feels like the village invalid, the guy who always has to depend on everyone else, who can't ever be the host. Now he can invite people over — and offer them a place to sit.
"I feel like now I can be counted as a person," he says.
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/541609649/how-to-fix-poverty-why-not-just-give-people-moneyQuote:
Yes, agrees Bentah. "It was a little bit gloomy."
But now, figuring out how to spend the charity windfall has become a hopeful, joint project. Adding up their budget has become a monthly ritual. And it's got them doing other fun stuff together. Going on shopping excursions to the market. And, says Otieno, strolling around the village, hand-in-hand.
"It's not normal in our village for couples to walk this way," he adds, grinning a little sheepishly. "But it's like we're married the other day."
"You mean like newlyweds?" I ask.
"Yes," he says, laughing. "You're right."
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"There are a thousand things that can happen when you go light a rocket engine, and only one of them is good."
Tom Mueller of SpaceX, in Air and Space, Jan. 2011