March 28, 2024

WuDunn, Kristof Examine Philanthropy in ‘A Path Appears’

After winning worldwide praise for their book Half the Sky, which explored opression and opportunity for women around the world, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn set out to help people make significant changes through philanthropy and fight hopelessness in the face of overwhelming problems in the world. Their new book, A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity, includes vignettes about people who have made a difference by volunteering or making small contributions.

The husband-and-wife team discussed their work during a book night at Club Quarters on Friday, Nov. 7.

“It does feel to us that there is this concern broad yearning on the part of so many Americans to have an impact, to make a difference in the world,” said Kristof, an OPC award winner and longtime member of the club.

“And yet concern about corruption, about inefficiency of aid groups, and a sense that the problems are so vast that – what can anyone do?”

Kristof described important changes over the last decade that have allowed researchers and groups like Charity Navigator and GiveWell to study the kinds of aid that work best.

“It used to be that charitable giving was a shot in the dark,” he said. But researchers have used rigorous randomized trials to study what kinds of aid work best “just like pharmaceutical companies do.”

“For example, it turns out that the most cost-effective way to get one more child in school around the world is not what we tend to think of, which is building a new school, but is something much less common – it’s de-worming,” he said.

He said children who suffer from intestinal parasites in developing countries miss out on education and their brain development can be hampered by anemia. The problem is easily treatable, at a cost of 50 cents per year to de-worm a child through organizations like the Deworm the World Initiative.

In another example of high-impact charitable contributions, Kristof remembers a Father’s Day gift his children bought for him — sponsorship of a giant Gambian pouched rat, a species that can be trained to sniff out land mines without triggering them. Just one of them can demine as much land in two hours as a human can in two days.

WuDunn outlined some of the physiological benefits of giving. Research has shown neurological benefits for people who give, she said, and more than half of the people in one study reported a higher degree of pleasure than those who received gifts.

“It turns out that being compassionate and volunteering actually elevates your health outcomes,” Wudunn said. She said givers often experience a release of the hormone oxytocin, which has a calming and healing effect on the body. Volunteering, she said, correlates to a 44 percent drop in mortality rate.

OPC board member Seymour Topping, who moderated the discussion, asked whether the authors thought the world needed a central charismatic figure like Nelson Mandela to galvanize global movements for change.

“There is a deep human yearning for transformational figures or in the world of policy, for silver bullets,” Kristof said. “Change more often happens not from silver bullets, but from silver buckshot…from modest changes that collectively add up,” Kristof said.

“In all of our lives there’s a lot of chaos, we’re busy, we have a lot of things going on and there’s a huge amount of randomness to it. And I think that if we do find some way of giving back, of connecting to a cause larger than ourselves, it does provide that overlay of purpose and meaning.”