Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ India funded a starving kids' app, but not food

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

I guess it's easier to attribute blame for this to 'India' instead of the funders and organizers (such as the World Bank and the Gates Foundation). There's certainly blame to go around. "The program spent money on an app to track which kids were malnourished, but it didn't offer sufficient funds to feed them." Read more here. Cory Doctorow attributes this to tech 'solutionism' - "it ignored all the parts of the problem not related to digital technology, sidelined the workers who understood the problem and treated them and the families they served with contempt." More, I would say, it caters to this idea that measuring a problem is sufficient to manage it, or at least, is sufficient to satisfy those with no actual interest in managing it. What should these foundations do? Make sure there's enough food. Pay people proper wages. Give them ownership over their own problems and the responses to them. This all applies to education as well, and most definitely not only in India.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Dec 25, 2024 08:35 a.m.

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