Former World Bank economist William Easterly is generally scathing of western attempts at delivering aid to the poor countries of the world.

In his book The White Man’s Burden, he is particularly scathing of how aid was administered to Haiti, a country that has been poorly governed for many decades, with the aid delivered to the country via numerous western agencies often being frittered away by the corrupt and unstable series of governments the country has had, and the country remains the poorest in the entire western hemisphere.

Central to his various grumbles about the traditional method of delivering aid is that poor governments are propped up by aid agencies that seem to regard spending money as the key outcome of their work rather than actually improving the lives of the poor they proclaim to serve.  This is highlighted by the lack of feedback that usually comes with aid, so it’s very hard to know just how effective efforts have been.

Easterly classifies the traditional approach as the work of planners, whereas he regards searchers as capable of delivering more market driven responses.

Planners think they have all of the answers already, and therefore tend to place their trust in external expertise and look for solutions from within their existing field of knowledge.  Planners tend to favor top down solutions to each problem.

Searchers, on the other hand, readily admit that they don’t have the solution beforehand and accept that most situations are incredibly complex and require a very nuanced solution.  Whereas planners like top down solutions, searchers tend to prefer bottom up ones instead.

A crowd based response

It’s possible, therefore, that Easterly might approve of a new crowd based project launching in Haiti to try and tackle the housing crisis in the country after the earthquake a few years ago destroyed much of the existing housing stock.

The project, called New Story, is a Haiti based non-profit that is applying crowdfunding to try and help restore the housing stock in the country.

Each new house costs in the region of $6,000, and the platform is turning to the crowd to help families raise the funds directly to finance such a construction.

The platform has teamed up with the charity Mission of Hope, who are helping to locate families in need of support.  These families are then helped with setting up a crowdfunding campaign.

Potential donors can research the family’s story and see how their money will contribute to the construction of the house, with a detailed breakdown of how much will be spent on various aspects of the construction.

Any money raised goes directly to the family, with any work undertaken by local builders to ensure the money stays within the local community.

The aim is to complete each new build within two months, with the recipient family then posting a video update from within their new home.

Check out their video below, or browse their website for the latest projects.