Kate Schecter, CEO of World Neighbors, returns to the show and reveals how empowering local communities leads to long-term self-sufficiency in developing economies. She explains that roads connecting isolated communities to local markets can massively improve opportunities. She also explains that even modest interventions, like access to municipal water, can have profound impacts. From disaster preparedness in Indonesia to sustainable farming in Africa, Kate illustrates how World Neighbors helps communities build resilience.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for Gene, please email him at contact@economicsexplored.com.
You can listen to the episode via the embedded player below or via podcasting apps including Apple Podcast and Spotify.
About this episode’s guest: Dr Kate Schecter
Kate Schecter, Ph.D., joined WN as President and Chief Executive Officer in June, 2014. Dr. Schecter is responsible for managing World Neighbors’ programs and operations in 14 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In her previous position, she worked for the American International Health Alliance (AIHA) for 14 years. As a Senior Program Officer at AIHA, she had responsibility for managing health partnerships throughout Eurasia and Central and Eastern Europe. Through her work with over 35 partnerships addressing healthcare and treatment, she has extensive experience successfully implementing AIHA’s health partnership model.
From 1997 to 2000, Dr. Schecter worked as a consultant for the World Bank specializing in healthcare reform and child welfare issues in Eurasia and Eastern Europe. She taught political science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for four years (1993-1997). She has written extensively about healthcare in post-Soviet states, and has made three documentary films for PBS. Over the past eight years at World Neighbors, Dr. Schecter has authored or co-authored 21 articles about the challenges of international development in very poor rural countries, the impact of climate change, and how to help alleviate mass migration through effective international aid.
Dr. Schecter holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and an M.A. in Soviet Studies from Harvard University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served on the Board of Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. from 2010 to 2018.
Timestamps for EP273
- Introduction (0:00)
- World Neighbors’ Geographical Reach and Recent Developments (2:34)
- Improving Climate Resilience in Agriculture (6:03)
- Disaster Preparedness and Community-Based Approaches (9:57)
- Connecting Communities with National and Regional Administrations (14:05)
- Funding and Operational Efficiency (23:21)
- Impact and Future Plans (27:08)
- Conclusion and Final Thoughts (29:24)
Takeaways
- Infrastructure can be transformative – Building a simple road or bridge can unlock market access for rural farmers, dramatically improving incomes and food security.
- Local savings and credit groups empower communities – These groups help farmers and entrepreneurs access capital for investments without relying on exploitative lenders.
- Disaster preparedness saves lives – Teaching communities to plan for floods, earthquakes, and other disasters helps them recover quickly and with fewer casualties.
- Indigenous crops can boost resilience – Reviving traditional drought-resistant crops helps communities adapt to climate change and maintain food security.
Links relevant to the conversation
Kate’s previous appearance on the show:
World Neighbor’s website:
Francis Fukuyama’s book Trust:
https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Social-Virtues-Creation-Prosperity/dp/0029109760
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Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com.
Transcript: Bang for Your Buck in Economic Development: Access to Town Water, Roads to Connect Isolated Communities w/ Kate Schecter, World Neighbors – EP273
N.B. This is a lightly edited version of a transcript originally created using the AI application otter.ai. It may not be 100 percent accurate, but should be pretty close. If you’d like to quote from it, please check the quoted segment in the recording.
Kate Schecter 00:03
The government built a road, and all of a sudden they were able to bring their crops down from the mountain and sell at very good prices. And I’ve seen that happen all over the world. You know, just one small new road, one new bridge, something that helps link these isolated communities can change everything.
Gene Tunny 00:33
Welcome to the economics explored podcast, a frank and fearless exploration of important economic issues. I’m your host, Gene Tunny. I’m a professional economist and former Australian Treasury official. The aim of this show is to help you better understand the big economic issues affecting all our lives. We do this by considering the theory evidence and by hearing a wide range of views. I’m delighted that you can join me for this episode. Please check out the show notes for relevant information. Now on to the show. Hello and thanks for joining me in this episode. I’m excited to welcome Dr Kate Schechter, the President and CEO of world neighbors, an international development organization. This is Kate’s second time on the show, and I’ll put a link to a previous appearance in the show notes. For nearly 75 years, world neighbors has been helping communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It’s been helping them build resilience and self sufficiency. Kate is going to share valuable insights into how local savings and credit groups, sustainable farming practices and disaster of proudness empower people in some of the world’s most vulnerable areas. We’ll discuss how even a small investment like building an access road or connecting the village to municipal water, how they can significantly transform lives by creating economic opportunities and improving well being. Before we get started, I want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor, Lumo coffee. This top quality organic coffee from the highlands of Peru is full of healthy antioxidants. As a listener of economics explored, you can get a 10% discount. Details are in the show notes. Now let’s jump into the conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Hey, checta from World neighbors, welcome
Speaker 1 02:19
to the program. Thanks for having me. Gene it’s
Gene Tunny 02:23
good to catch up. So you’re on the show. Back in 2022 if I remember correctly, we learned about the work you do in emerging economies with the savings and credit group. So I mean all over the world, really. I mean play is it Nepal and Indonesia? Could Can you tell us a bit about that? And am I right that you’ve got that broad geographical reach we
Kate Schecter 02:46
do? Yes. We are in 14 countries, Africa, both in East and West Africa, and we’ve added Malawi since I spoke with you last. And we are in Asia, in South Asia, in Nepal and India, Southeast Asia in Indonesia and Timor Leste and in Latin America and in Haiti in the Caribbean. So we really, we cover the globe,
Gene Tunny 03:15
right? Okay, and so what have been the big development since, uh, 2022 so what have been some of the significant projects you’ve worked on in the last couple of years. Kate,
Kate Schecter 03:25
well, there’s, there’s more and more of a focus on climate change. Of course, just as as the more developed countries are facing extreme weather. Well, of course, these other countries are as well. And in the case of these subsistence level farmers, it can be very, very devastating. So we’re doing a lot of work to mitigate the impact of climate change through both working on planting a lot of trees and working on creating barriers for situations like flooding or landslides, of course, trying to have more drought resilient crops all around the world, going back to a lot of crops that were abandoned because they were considered kind of local and indigenous, but are actually more resilient in many cases and also very nutritious. Spending a lot of time now on maternal child health. You know, it were post we like to think that we’re post pandemic at this point. So really learn, trying to learn lessons from that about maintaining health, improving health, having more screenings for for the communities, and making sure that women are getting better anti and prenatal, prenatal and postnatal care. So really, the gamut the world neighbors approach. Approach is what we call a holistic approach. We don’t focus on one particular sector. We believe that if we want these communities to really be self sufficient, and we’re putting a big investment into them, we work with them and train the farmers and the communities for up to 10 years, we really want to walk away feeling confident that they will continue to be self sufficient on their own. So all of that is going on, but I would say there’s more and more of a focus on preparing for disasters and dealing with the impact of climate change.
Gene Tunny 05:38
Yeah, gotcha. And you mentioned drought resilient crops. So what does what does that look like? What types of crops are you talking about?
Kate Schecter 05:48
Well, we’re trying to make sure that crops will produce more. So you don’t want delicate crops that you know only that you you plant them and you only get one, one sort of product out of them. For example, there is, there’s a type of kale that we’re growing in East Africa that continues to produce leaves and and nourishing, you know, products for eight months, so the same plant keeps going. So everything we’re doing is really focused on trying to create nutritious food, food that will produce longer might, you might be able to have two or three crops a year, and also, you know, resilient to drought or flooding, and in cases where we have situations where there are floods, we also are teaching the farmers to grow crops that that that grow quickly. Beans are a good example. They grow very quickly, so you get them in the ground, and a couple weeks you’ve got you’ve got your vegetables. So all of these things are going on at the same time. Of course, the focus is on food security, getting people more food, healthier food, making sure that people have at least two nutritious meals, if not three nutritious meals a day, and that they have year round food. I mean, one of the biggest problems is, you know, there’s sort of this cycle of feast or famine, and we want to level it out so that people have food all year round.
Gene Tunny 07:33
Gotcha. Gotcha. One thing that comes up in economic development or or you hear about is this concern about the seeds that are being sold by the big the big suppliers, and I think one of the companies that used to be the accusations level against was Monsanto. And is it the case that you keep having to buy new seeds, that there’s some licensing or there’s some intellectual property issue. Is that an issue in economic development? Kate, Oh,
Kate Schecter 08:07
absolutely. It’s a big issue, and it’s problematic because many times these farmers are given seeds by big corporations, and the initial crop can look really fantastic, yep, but it can then damage the soil, and then the subsequent crops are either don’t really happen or are not very good. So one time I was in Haiti when Haiti was still safe enough to visit, and one of the communities started talking about Satan seeds, yeah, yeah, they were talking about Monsanto seeds. So we have spent a lot of time working with the communities to make sure that they are always growing new seeds. There are a lot of communities that have created seed banks so that they’re sharing the seeds and and making sure that they’re, you know, always providing for the next season. Also doing a lot of experimentation with seeds to, you know, again, find the most resilient and the most productive, for example, with corn and and also preservation. A lot of work on preserving the seeds, making sure that they’re good for the next season, but also preserving crops, you know, in in storage, that is, containers that are not going to allow for rotting or, you know, loss of the product.
Gene Tunny 09:39
Yep, gotcha. Gotcha, right? You mentioned, I mean, climate change, there’s a lot of focus on that, and so investments in the community. So there’s the drought resilience you’re talking about. What are some other other ways you’re preparing communities for climate change? Could you go into some of the this? Pacific side, please. Kind Well,
Kate Schecter 10:01
we are creating in these communities a plan, but disaster preparedness plans, okay? And that entails one of the things I haven’t really mentioned is that we don’t have a lot of full time staff. The way we operate is that we work with local community based organizations, and we help those groups to create good governance around their organization, their local organizations, you know, to teach them to have good leadership and to to really create a community based approach to all of these different things that we’re talking about, and in doing that, we are also helping them to prepare for the worst. Many of these communities face yearly flooding or yearly droughts, and so instead of it being a big shock, and, you know, not being prepared at all, we’re trying to figure out ways to be prepared to handle it well, and also to help neighboring communities so that you don’t have, you know, if one community is okay and nobody else is, it’s not going to it’s not going To work out very well. So all of that entails a lot of training, providing some drills to, you know, kind of act out what could happen in certain cases. And in, for example, in Indonesia, where we have been working for many years, we have been very successful in helping during some of these very difficult natural disasters. There were, there was a series of earthquakes five or six years ago, years ago in Sumbawa and a couple of islands near Bali. And we, where we work and our communities were prepared. They had a plan, and they were able to immediately identify people who needed help and to and to really mitigate the impact of the earthquakes, because they had thought ahead, right.
Gene Tunny 12:18
Okay, so what? What’s thinking ahead, involved where to evacuate and how to get emergency medical assistance. Yeah,
Kate Schecter 12:26
where to go, if you know if there’s danger of a tsunami or an earthquake, thinking about a sort of plan for how to deal with the injured. If you know, if the hospitals and the clinics collapse, and just having, you know, assigned roles for people so that there’s not this kind of level of chaos where nobody knows what to do, so that Whole disaster preparedness is very important, buildings, homes and and and, you know, fields with terracing and different types of patterns to prepare for the possibility of landslides or flooding and to mitigate that, all kinds of different techniques that are emerging around the world to help people, especially people like this, who are living on the land, who are very exposed to to, you know, anything that might happen with a natural disaster. But as we’ve seen, you know, even in urban areas, you can’t always be ready and or protected. I mean, the tragedy of Los Angeles, I think, just shows that even in the most you know, wealthiest and most kind of you know, people who were who were not living on the land and weren’t so dependent on the land, they still were terribly impacted by a natural disaster.
Gene Tunny 14:05
Okay, we’ll take a short break here for a word from our sponsor.
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Gene Tunny 14:39
now. Back to the show. One of the things I’ve found out, or I think your colleague, John, sent me some information about some about some work that you’ve been doing in Nepal, and he mentioned that it’s. Uh, private organizations, I suppose, like, well, neighbors that that can connect some of these communities, like some of these communities are actually disconnected from the national or regional administrations and and organizations such as yours can actually help connect them and help, you know, actually get some of the assistance delivered, which I thought was, I think it’s a good point. And can you tell us about what’s been happening is, is it the ganja or ganja farmers group in Nepal, please. Okay,
Kate Schecter 15:30
well, this, that phenomenon, is, is really at work all over the world, but Nepal is a very good example of it. So one of the things that we do is we try not to work under the radar of the national or the local governments. We want the government to know what we’re doing, because we want to be in line with whatever their efforts are. So we’re trying to build on those as opposed to kind of, you know, go off and do something that we want to do that’s not necessarily what the local community wants. We we’re definitely looking to build on past investments and to eventually hand over the work that we’ve done with the communities, to local governments and to the national government, and have them continue to support their own people. So we’re dealing with a lot of countries where rural communities often do not get support. They may be off the grid, they may not have central you know, they may not have water from their municipality. And so a big goal of ours is to be a liaison to whatever is available and and that entails, many times, just informing communities, especially women, who are, you know, often the farmers in Nepal, because many of The men go off to to to send home remittances from, you know, working in the Gulf states. So you have a lot of communities in Nepal that are primarily women, and then they may be undereducated or completely illiterate, and they don’t know about benefits that they may be eligible for. So a big role we play is just informing the governments about what we’re doing and informing the communities and making sure that people get the benefits that they’re eligible for. In India, we work in Bihar, which is one of the poorest states. It’s in northern India. And again, we’re working with large groups of primarily illiterate women. Many of them are from the Dali class, which is our cast, which is the untouchable caste, and they just don’t even know about a lot of the things that they’re eligible for. So, you know, in an ideal world, we’re there. We we sort of get the ball rolling. We do all this training, we get people, we develop capacity, and in the communities, we help people start their own businesses, and then we hand it off to the local governments so that they can continue to keep all of this, going,
Gene Tunny 18:22
Yeah, gotcha, yeah, gotcha. And it looks like this example with this farmers group. So the 23 farmers and you help them set up a savings and credit group. So they this is something we talked about last time. They contribute small amounts of money each month, and then that capital that’s used to make loans to members at very low interest rates, and then they invest in in equipment that, or whatever they need to to boost their productivity, their agricultural productivity, or whatever they’re doing in their business. And then they have the regular loan repayments. And that goes back to that, that fund, and what I found interesting is that that group, they were unaware of some of the programs that could help them to buy or to fund those, those investments, and you you help them, you know, finding out some of that information, getting access to, I think there’s a subsidy for mulching plastic. There’s a subsidy for a mini tractor. So I think that, yeah, that’s that looks like. It’s really valuable work being able to help these communities tap into that. So are there any other examples of that, Kate, that come to your mind?
Kate Schecter 19:34
Yeah, so we, we’re doing that also in India. So you, you see that there are subsidies all over the world for farmers, you know, to for equipment and seeds and things like that. In addition, many times, there’s more health care available bull than people realize. So we’ll go into these communities. And women are not getting pre and postnatal care, and all it takes is letting them know about local facilities that they have access to, and they just simply don’t even know about it. Sometimes, again with water, we might be simply finding out about municipal water sources that could be brought to their communities with just the knowledge that that is that that is a benefit, that they are eligible for. Electricity is the same thing I’ve gone to visit. You know, some of the ward the ward managers in Nepal, and many times, they just don’t even know about what’s going on in these very isolated communities, and they’re excited to help them, because, of course, it helps their reputation to to help out the communities and for everybody to do better. Well, there’s a great example of a situation where there was a Dalit community, untouchable community, that lived on the other side of a river, and they built this really rickety wooden bridge, which I refused to try to even cross, because it was too scary. But they so they build this bridge. And every year the bridge would get washed away when the, you know, when it was heavy rains. And all we did was connect them with the local municipality, and together, they raised enough money to build a solid, you know, very safe suspension bridge with with a metal suspension bridge that I was willing to cross over. I mean, it just, just building a road or building a bridge, getting help from, you know, local government that they that they may not know about, it can change everything. Another great example was in Timor Leste. I went up into the mountains of in in which is this very isolated part of Timor Leste. And we get there, and there’s a whole, you know, group that’s very excited to meet with us, and the leader stands up and he says to this year, we saved $36,000 in our in our savings and credit groups. And I thought, Oh, where are they keeping that money? That’s a lot of money. And they said, the reason they have raised so much money is because the government built a road, and all of a sudden they were able to bring their crops down from the mountain and sell at very good prices. And I’ve seen that happen all over the world. You know, just one small new road, one new bridge, something that helps link these isolated communities can change everything.
Gene Tunny 22:56
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s It’s so true. It’s so true getting that mobility and and that helps people connected. It helps economic activity. Yeah, absolutely
Kate Schecter 23:05
poor. I mean, they also have to have the knowledge and capacity to, you know, get the trucks and get the product to the market on time, etc, etc. But, but that one, you know, key factor, can really change things?
Gene Tunny 23:21
Yeah, absolutely. And Kate, where does the funding come from? Is it private philanthropy? Is there some some funding from international financial institutions? Where does the funding for your work come from? Our
Kate Schecter 23:34
funding is, is very diverse. We have a number of family foundations that have been giving to world neighbors for many, many years. We are about to have our 75th anniversary in 2026, and some of these families have been giving for 75 years. So it’s, it’s both private donations we get. We also get grants from several corporate foundations. Starbucks Foundation has been giving to world neighbors now for 10 years in primarily in Latin America. And then we also have individual donations, people around the country, primarily in the United States, some foreign donations, but primarily United States, and we’ve also received some grants from international foundations. Again, primarily our grants have come from us foundations, right?
Gene Tunny 24:35
Yep, yep, yep, absolutely. And you were founded in your headquarter in Oklahoma City is that rod and you’ve, you’re sorry, that’s
Kate Schecter 24:42
right. We keep our headquarters in Oklahoma City, where world neighbors was founded. We’re the only organization of our kind there, and so, you know, that makes us quite unique. We have a very strong base of support in Oklahoma. Both in Oklahoma City and in Tulsa. And I speak a lot. There’s a lot of universities in Oklahoma, and young people are very eager to learn about what we’re doing. So I speak at a various different universities throughout the state and in Texas as well. So it’s kind of it kind of defies the stereotype of Oklahoma and Texas as being kind of, you know, not as involved in international development as the east coast or the west coast. There’s a very strong interest and desire to be considered, you know, global citizens in Oklahoma and Texas,
Gene Tunny 25:42
yeah, yeah, no, it’s very good. There’s this idea of donor fatigue, or because there was a lot of skepticism about how official development assistance, how far will foreign aid, and whether it actually achieves its outcomes, or concerns about corruption. You know, money being wasted, money leaking. I mean, like in Indonesia, you’d be aware there are studies of, like, losses on World Bank road projects. They did some study in East Java and concluded that on one project at least, at least 20% was lost in corruption or something like that. I mean, just like, it’s really bad, you know. So people are concerned about that. How do you go about like when you’re talking to potential donors? How do you try to allay or sort of mitigate those concerns that people have about where development assistance goes? We
Kate Schecter 26:34
have all funding come to the United States, which is highly, highly regulated, yeah, so that, you know, we are in control. We’re a small organization compared to many others, and we are, you know, we’re extremely careful because we are. We’re working in places that have a reputation for being highly corrupt. So there’s very little cash. You know that we’re, of course, we’re paying our staff. We do give small sub grants to these community based organizations so that they can, you know, pay trainers and things. But compared to many organizations we’re, you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck from World neighbors. Yeah, we’re reaching, you know, hundreds of 1000s of people. We estimate that over the 75 years we have, we’ve had an impact on 29 million people. We, you know, the numbers are big, but the the actual operation is, is very streamlined and, and so, you know, you don’t have these, this huge bureaucracy where things can get a little bit fuzzy sometimes. And so, you know, that’s a big way to control the costs. We have a very good ratio of 87% of the funds that we get from various different, you know, from donors and from foundations, etc, goes to program. So we really have a pretty low overhead um, and we’re trying to always make it even better and and that way where, you know, the money is getting spent on what it’s supposed to be spent on, and not on expensive cars and fantasy offices. Yeah, most of us work from home at this point. Yeah. You know, that was actually kind of a challenge for me, because when I first got to world neighbors, and I saw that, you know, the two cars and and a nice office and everything. And I thought, no, no, this is we really got to cut back on this culturally. That was that was not easy in certain places where people just had a very hard time adjusting to the idea that they weren’t going to have an office where they could invite people for coffee, and then they weren’t going to have, you know, sort of this fancy place to to meet people. And, of course, now you know now that COVID has happened, and so much has changed. Everybody’s adjusted very well, but, but, but it took some time in in certain places where people just culturally, didn’t like the idea that that they were going to have to work from their homes.
Gene Tunny 29:25
Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, look, thanks for the update. This has been really interesting.
Kate Schecter 29:30
I really appreciate you, you know, coming back and your interest in the work we’re doing. It’s always, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you and to kind of delve into some of the these difficult issues. So thank you. Oh,
Gene Tunny 29:43
no problem. Kate, well, I mean, I’ve done, you know, I occasionally do work with Indonesian finance ministry or Baptist, and, you know, it’s some capability building courses. And, I mean, I just find it fascinating learning about the challenges they face and just real. Seen. I mean, there are things we take for granted here in developed economies, such as the ability of a functioning payment system and all sorts of things that they often come up that are impediments to, like the lack of these things in those countries. So I always, always find it fascinating learning.
Kate Schecter 30:20
Yeah, many years ago, when I was working on my dissertation, I looked into this question of trust. And there’s a wonderful book by Francis Fukuyama called trust, yeah, about how do developed economies create trust? You know, how can you, how can how can you sign a contract and be confident that it’s, it’s a legal document that you can rely on, and I’ve always thought about that as we, you know, go around the world and contract for consultants and things that it’s, it’s much shakier in some of these other places. Yeah,
Gene Tunny 30:59
yeah. Absolutely. Okay, Kate, check this. CEO, well, neighbors, thanks so much for your time, and look good luck with everything. And hopefully we can catch up again in the future and find out some more of the great work you’ve been doing.
Speaker 1 31:13
Thank you so much. Gene, you take care. You too. Thanks. Kate, bye,
Gene Tunny 31:19
righto, thanks for listening to this episode of economics explored. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. You can send me an email via contact at economics explored.com or a voicemail via SpeakPipe. You can find the link in the show notes. If you’ve enjoyed the show, I’d be grateful if you could tell anyone you think would be interested about it. Word of mouth is one of the main ways that people learn about the show. Finally, if your podcasting app lets you, then please write a review and leave a rating. Thanks for listening. I hope you can join me again next week. You
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Credits
Thanks to the show’s sponsor, Gene’s consultancy business, www.adepteconomics.com.au. Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com. Economics Explored is available via Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms.
