Giving Compass' Take:

• A journalism initiative called "What Went Wrong?" exposed 142 failed aid projects in Kenya, explaining that feedback mechanisms might be a useful tool to help these projects become sustainable. 

• What are some examples of helpful feedback loops?  What are the barriers to employing feedback mechanisms in development aid?

• Read about the three questions that make development projects effective and impactful. 


Over six months in 2018, What Went Wrong? collected 142 reports of failed aid projects in Kenya, each submitted over the phone or via social media by the very people the project was supposed to benefit. It’s a move intended to help upend the way foreign aid is disbursed and debated. Although aid organizations spend significant time evaluating whether or not aid works, beneficiaries are often excluded from that process.

“There’s a serious power imbalance,” says Peter DiCampo, the photojournalist behind the initiative. “The people receiving foreign aid generally do not have much say. They don’t get to choose which intervention they want, which one would feel most beneficial for them. Our goal is to help these conversations happen ... to put power into the hands of the people receiving foreign aid.”

What Went Wrong? documented eight failed projects in an investigative series published by Devex in March. In Kibera, one of Kenya’s largest slums, public restrooms meant to improve sanitation failed to connect to water and sewage infrastructure and were later repurposed as churches. In another story, the World Bank and local thugs struggled for control over the slum’s electrical grid.

Projects fail for varied reasons—cultural miscommunications, corruption, or ideas that were just bad to start with. But one thing DiCampo kept coming back to was that conversations about aid were often a one-way street.

Aid organizations “are not held accountable in the way that customer service holds companies accountable,” DiCampo says. “If you’re running a company, you know you’re doing a good job because people chose your product over another. That doesn’t exist in foreign aid.”

Put a feedback mechanism in place, he reasons, and you might start to correct this problem.

Read the full article about journalism initiative by Abigail Higgins at Stanford Social Innovation Review.