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Economics

Ackman-Backed Harvard Grads Make Aiding the Poor a New Business

  • Cash handouts revolutionizing global system of emergency aid
  • Economists starting company to process, track the handouts
People wash clothes in the Kibera slum, located in Nairobi, Kenya.

People wash clothes in the Kibera slum, located in Nairobi, Kenya.

Photographer: Thomas Campean/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
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Michael Faye and Paul Niehaus spent summers as Harvard graduate students trying to give cash to the poor in the villages of Kenya.

The villagers were perplexed; development experts thought the two had lost their minds. People who live on less than a dollar a day, the experts said, were sure to spend the money on cigarettes and alcohol.