[Music]
so when people ask me what is it that I
do I tell them in my work what I try to
do is I try to get stuff to people so
you don’t need a PhD in political
science to get stuff to people you just
give them stuff then I tell them this is
really the question that I’m interested
in how do you deliver vaccines to
children living in a slum like this we
know that vaccines can save lives we
know how to make vaccines cheaply back
in some cases we even know how to
provide them for free we know that
vaccines will have a disproportionately
positive impact among children who are
the poorest of the poor and yet we
really don’t know how to deliver these
vaccines to people to children living in
slums like this because if you’ve ever
spent any time in a slum you will know
that it’s a physical maze if you are a
child living in a slum chances are you
never had your birth register which
means that you probably don’t have a
birth certificate which means that then
you don’t have access to the health
system which is how we deliver vaccines
if you’re a child living in a slum you
probably don’t go to school regularly
which is how we deliver vaccines here in
Canada and if you live in a slum you
probably don’t have an address so these
are the kinds of questions that vex me
in my work because we know what we need
to do but we don’t know how to get it to
people who need the most and if we’re
serious about the sustainable
development goals if we’re serious about
eliminating poverty in all its forms
everywhere then we have to figure out
how to get those vaccines to children
living in slums now the backdrop of my
work of course are the Sustainable
Development Goals the SDGs which were
just signed in 2015 but as we look ahead
to the SDGs it probably makes a little
sense to look retrospectively at their
predecessors the Millennium Development
Goals or the MDGs which were signed in
2000 now the MDGs by most measures were
an extraordinary success
countries around the world improved
health outcomes education outcomes
poverty outcomes the MDGs sparked a
whole generation of innovation new
partnerships between governments private
sector actors partnerships between the
government and the market the MDGs were
the era in which terms like social
innovation and social entrepreneurship
became mainstream but the MDGs were not
an unqualified success because when you
actually begin to disaggregate the data
when you begin to unpack these national
success cases we actually see a very
different story
take Chile for example Chile is hailed
around the world as being a national
success in improving maternal child
health and in the aggregate it did
improve maternal child health over
baseline now if you begin to cut this
data in different ways if you begin to
disaggregate it say by region and you
look at the regions inside Chile 47
percent of those regions did improve in
terms of maternal child health outcomes
but 41 percent of those regions actually
got worse of the countries that improve
maternal child health outcomes
two-thirds of them posted growing levels
of inequality the inference being that
there are many who are left behind
Anthony Lake who has UNICEF has said
that our national statistical national
success cases are masking moral and
practical failures because people are
being left behind now who are these
people the data tells us that these
people are those who are the poorest of
the poor those who are living in a slum
maybe those who are living far off in
the countryside women and children
disproportionately girls indigenous
populations the culturally marginalized
and so on these are the people being
left behind the question is why are they
being left behind
they’re being left behind because
they’re hard to reach and they’re hard
to reach because they are for all
intents and purposes invisible consider
for instance that until very recently
fifty percent of India’s population
about 650 million people did not have
any form of identification consider in
slums which are by definition an illegal
settlement there are no addresses
consider for instance that in the global
South the vast majority of workers work
in the informal sector there are
irregular wage earners their
agricultural or seasonal wage earners
they work under the table they work for
contracts in India for instance 92
percent of workers if you include
agricultural workers are informally
employed only one of ten work in the
formal labor sector now consider that as
of 2013 UNICEF estimates that 230
million children around the world under
the age of five that’s one third of the
world’s children under the age of five
do not have their births registered
which means they likely don’t have a
birth certificate which means they are
then shut out of health and education
services and they are vulnerable to
human atrocities such as human
trafficking these children are children
I met when I was doing some work in
Ethiopia in all likelihood their births
were not registered in all likelihood
they don’t have a birth certificate
because the birth registration rate in
Ethiopia is seven percent so this is the
kind of work that I’m doing in my own
research lab the reach project here at
the Munk school of global affairs at the
University of Toronto is looking at
cases around the world trying to
understand how we can reach those who
are hardest to reach and we have case we
have researched sites in Rwanda Thailand
India South Africa Brazil and in Jordan
and we’ve learned a lot through our
research we’ve learned that there are
some really
cool technological innovations that are
being used to reach the hardest to reach
so mobile technology as a platform for
financial inclusion that is now getting
people in both the cities and in the
countryside into the banking sector
drones that are delivering things to
far-off places we have a project in
Jordan in which iris scan technologies
are used to ensure cash transfers
satellite imaging providing geo codes or
geo tags in lieu of an address for those
who are living in slums a lot of cool
technological stuff that you might read
in Wired magazine or that my colleagues
here at U of T are working on are
reaching the hardest to reach we’re also
learning however there is a lot of not
so cool but equally effective ways in
which we’re reaching the hardest to
reach in Brazil for instance to deliver
cash transfers to those living the
Amazon rim they use a boat and there’s
an ATM machine that goes upriver and
delivers cash in Brazil there is the
cadastral único which is a registry in
which all low income households are
registered in on that line where you are
supposed to put your address if you live
in a favela and you don’t have an
address you can say that I live in
so-and-so Falabella
fourth lane third alley pass the law
area house pass latrine second or red
door on your right that’s the kind of
precision that we’re uncovering in how
people are reaching the hardest to reach
we’ve had teams shadowing mobile units
when people get in vans and drive
literally hours to ensure that childrens
are having their births registered and
we’ve shout out community health workers
who are literally pounding the pavement
knocking on doors making sure that
families are sending their kids to
school that their children are receiving
their vaccines or that they’re receiving
their cash transfer the key point I’m
trying to make here is that we need to
reach the hardest to reach and to reach
the hardest to reach means that we can’t
simply be doing more of the same the
MDGs were a great era it helped us
reduce poverty but if we want to
eliminate poverty we can’t be doing more
the same we need some innovative
thinking we need to reach the hardest to
reach but we also need to want to reach
the hardest to reach and that’s a
political question that’s a reflection
of political will but the problem is is
that reaching the hardest to reach is
expensive to reach voters in the ladis
tricked in the northern mountains of
India to reach those 140 voters to
register them costs sixteen hundred US
dollars per voter likely three times
more than what that person earns in a
year is you have to get on a plane get
in a truck pay for the fuel ride camels
hike overnight in order to reach that
person who is hard to reach sending cash
up the Amazon means you have to have a
boat the boat has to be secured you have
to pay for fuel all the time in order to
deliver those cash transfers to people
living in the jungle here in Canada we
know that food prices in northern Canada
are five or six times higher than what
we pay here in Toronto and it shouldn’t
come as a surprise that 50% of
indigenous children suffer from food
insecurity now the issue is not the cost
of the intervention itself because after
all a cash transfer in South Paulo is
the same as a cash transfer in the
Amazon Rim just as the intrinsic value
of a bunch of grapes here in Toronto is
the same as the value of a bunch of
grapes in northern Canada it’s not the
cost of the intervention itself that’s
expensive it’s delivering that
intervention that’s expensive it’s
reaching the hardest to reach that is
expensive so the idea that we are going
to experience the economies of scale as
we expand out whereby things get cheaper
is simply not true in fact in our
research what we’re finding is that the
marginal cost of reaching the hardest to
reach increases the further out you go
from an economic point of view this is
dollars and cents this is expressed as
cost from a political point of view this
is
about redistribution the redistribution
of resources from the haves to the
have-nots now as a political scientist I
could tell you a few things about the
politics of redistribution the haves
don’t tend to like to redistribute
resources to the have-nots the very poor
tend not to politically mobilize because
frankly they have more important things
to do like getting their next meal on
the table and three it’s generally not
politically worthwhile for governments
to reach the hardest to reach so what do
we know them we know that it’s
imperative to reach the hardest to reach
we know it’s very difficult to reach
those who are hard to reach and we know
it’s very expensive to reach those that
are hard to reach but we have to do all
of that if we want to achieve the
sustainable development goals what we
need is disruptive development and this
is what we’re doing in the reach lab
here at the University of Toronto we’re
uncovering what we see to be the
ingredients of disruptive development
what are some of these ingredients first
solutions over technology we need to
find solutions technology is a
phenomenal enabler but we don’t push the
technologies unless they are solving a
problem
second politics is just as important if
not more important than dollars and
cents because if we don’t have the
political will we’re never going to
reach the hardest to reach and third
reality boots on the ground seeing with
your own eyes
smelling with your own noses hearing
with your own ears is how we’re going to
generate solutions more than any of the
theories that we’re going to write and
transcribe here at the University and
this is where you come in the disruptive
generation the work that I’m doing with
my students and we have students from
across the University of Toronto working
in this lab my students tell me that the
SDGs is their generations call it
they tell me it’s their generations
responsibility the MDGs were mine the
SDGs are theirs and I’m really
optimistic I have seen extraordinary
commitment on the part of these young
people in recognizing this to be their
generations college I have been told by
these young people that they do not see
their future life’s work in terms of
climbing rung after rung up the
corporate ladder but rather moving from
project to project solution to solution
these young people tell me that impact
is more important than profit and it eat
I’ve seen that for these young people
the world is a much smaller place
technology has made the world a much
smaller place and empathy has made the
world a much smaller place and so while
I’m a vex and I will continue to vex
about questions like how do we deliver
vaccines to children living in a slum I
expect that your generation will not be
vexed by these questions and I look
forward to hearing your solutions Thank
You professor Joseph Wald
[Applause]
so when people ask me what is it that I
do I tell them in my work what I try to
do is I try to get stuff to people so
you don’t need a PhD in political
science to get stuff to people you just
give them stuff then I tell them this is
really the question that I’m interested
in how do you deliver vaccines to
children living in a slum like this we
know that vaccines can save lives we
know how to make vaccines cheaply back
in some cases we even know how to
provide them for free we know that
vaccines will have a disproportionately
positive impact among children who are
the poorest of the poor and yet we
really don’t know how to deliver these
vaccines to people to children living in
slums like this because if you’ve ever
spent any time in a slum you will know
that it’s a physical maze if you are a
child living in a slum chances are you
never had your birth register which
means that you probably don’t have a
birth certificate which means that then
you don’t have access to the health
system which is how we deliver vaccines
if you’re a child living in a slum you
probably don’t go to school regularly
which is how we deliver vaccines here in
Canada and if you live in a slum you
probably don’t have an address so these
are the kinds of questions that vex me
in my work because we know what we need
to do but we don’t know how to get it to
people who need the most and if we’re
serious about the sustainable
development goals if we’re serious about
eliminating poverty in all its forms
everywhere then we have to figure out
how to get those vaccines to children
living in slums now the backdrop of my
work of course are the Sustainable
Development Goals the SDGs which were
just signed in 2015 but as we look ahead
to the SDGs it probably makes a little
sense to look retrospectively at their
predecessors the Millennium Development
Goals or the MDGs which were signed in
2000 now the MDGs by most measures were
an extraordinary success
countries around the world improved
health outcomes education outcomes
poverty outcomes the MDGs sparked a
whole generation of innovation new
partnerships between governments private
sector actors partnerships between the
government and the market the MDGs were
the era in which terms like social
innovation and social entrepreneurship
became mainstream but the MDGs were not
an unqualified success because when you
actually begin to disaggregate the data
when you begin to unpack these national
success cases we actually see a very
different story
take Chile for example Chile is hailed
around the world as being a national
success in improving maternal child
health and in the aggregate it did
improve maternal child health over
baseline now if you begin to cut this
data in different ways if you begin to
disaggregate it say by region and you
look at the regions inside Chile 47
percent of those regions did improve in
terms of maternal child health outcomes
but 41 percent of those regions actually
got worse of the countries that improve
maternal child health outcomes
two-thirds of them posted growing levels
of inequality the inference being that
there are many who are left behind
Anthony Lake who has UNICEF has said
that our national statistical national
success cases are masking moral and
practical failures because people are
being left behind now who are these
people the data tells us that these
people are those who are the poorest of
the poor those who are living in a slum
maybe those who are living far off in
the countryside women and children
disproportionately girls indigenous
populations the culturally marginalized
and so on these are the people being
left behind the question is why are they
being left behind
they’re being left behind because
they’re hard to reach and they’re hard
to reach because they are for all
intents and purposes invisible consider
for instance that until very recently
fifty percent of India’s population
about 650 million people did not have
any form of identification consider in
slums which are by definition an illegal
settlement there are no addresses
consider for instance that in the global
South the vast majority of workers work
in the informal sector there are
irregular wage earners their
agricultural or seasonal wage earners
they work under the table they work for
contracts in India for instance 92
percent of workers if you include
agricultural workers are informally
employed only one of ten work in the
formal labor sector now consider that as
of 2013 UNICEF estimates that 230
million children around the world under
the age of five that’s one third of the
world’s children under the age of five
do not have their births registered
which means they likely don’t have a
birth certificate which means they are
then shut out of health and education
services and they are vulnerable to
human atrocities such as human
trafficking these children are children
I met when I was doing some work in
Ethiopia in all likelihood their births
were not registered in all likelihood
they don’t have a birth certificate
because the birth registration rate in
Ethiopia is seven percent so this is the
kind of work that I’m doing in my own
research lab the reach project here at
the Munk school of global affairs at the
University of Toronto is looking at
cases around the world trying to
understand how we can reach those who
are hardest to reach and we have case we
have researched sites in Rwanda Thailand
India South Africa Brazil and in Jordan
and we’ve learned a lot through our
research we’ve learned that there are
some really
cool technological innovations that are
being used to reach the hardest to reach
so mobile technology as a platform for
financial inclusion that is now getting
people in both the cities and in the
countryside into the banking sector
drones that are delivering things to
far-off places we have a project in
Jordan in which iris scan technologies
are used to ensure cash transfers
satellite imaging providing geo codes or
geo tags in lieu of an address for those
who are living in slums a lot of cool
technological stuff that you might read
in Wired magazine or that my colleagues
here at U of T are working on are
reaching the hardest to reach we’re also
learning however there is a lot of not
so cool but equally effective ways in
which we’re reaching the hardest to
reach in Brazil for instance to deliver
cash transfers to those living the
Amazon rim they use a boat and there’s
an ATM machine that goes upriver and
delivers cash in Brazil there is the
cadastral único which is a registry in
which all low income households are
registered in on that line where you are
supposed to put your address if you live
in a favela and you don’t have an
address you can say that I live in
so-and-so Falabella
fourth lane third alley pass the law
area house pass latrine second or red
door on your right that’s the kind of
precision that we’re uncovering in how
people are reaching the hardest to reach
we’ve had teams shadowing mobile units
when people get in vans and drive
literally hours to ensure that childrens
are having their births registered and
we’ve shout out community health workers
who are literally pounding the pavement
knocking on doors making sure that
families are sending their kids to
school that their children are receiving
their vaccines or that they’re receiving
their cash transfer the key point I’m
trying to make here is that we need to
reach the hardest to reach and to reach
the hardest to reach means that we can’t
simply be doing more of the same the
MDGs were a great era it helped us
reduce poverty but if we want to
eliminate poverty we can’t be doing more
the same we need some innovative
thinking we need to reach the hardest to
reach but we also need to want to reach
the hardest to reach and that’s a
political question that’s a reflection
of political will but the problem is is
that reaching the hardest to reach is
expensive to reach voters in the ladis
tricked in the northern mountains of
India to reach those 140 voters to
register them costs sixteen hundred US
dollars per voter likely three times
more than what that person earns in a
year is you have to get on a plane get
in a truck pay for the fuel ride camels
hike overnight in order to reach that
person who is hard to reach sending cash
up the Amazon means you have to have a
boat the boat has to be secured you have
to pay for fuel all the time in order to
deliver those cash transfers to people
living in the jungle here in Canada we
know that food prices in northern Canada
are five or six times higher than what
we pay here in Toronto and it shouldn’t
come as a surprise that 50% of
indigenous children suffer from food
insecurity now the issue is not the cost
of the intervention itself because after
all a cash transfer in South Paulo is
the same as a cash transfer in the
Amazon Rim just as the intrinsic value
of a bunch of grapes here in Toronto is
the same as the value of a bunch of
grapes in northern Canada it’s not the
cost of the intervention itself that’s
expensive it’s delivering that
intervention that’s expensive it’s
reaching the hardest to reach that is
expensive so the idea that we are going
to experience the economies of scale as
we expand out whereby things get cheaper
is simply not true in fact in our
research what we’re finding is that the
marginal cost of reaching the hardest to
reach increases the further out you go
from an economic point of view this is
dollars and cents this is expressed as
cost from a political point of view this
is
about redistribution the redistribution
of resources from the haves to the
have-nots now as a political scientist I
could tell you a few things about the
politics of redistribution the haves
don’t tend to like to redistribute
resources to the have-nots the very poor
tend not to politically mobilize because
frankly they have more important things
to do like getting their next meal on
the table and three it’s generally not
politically worthwhile for governments
to reach the hardest to reach so what do
we know them we know that it’s
imperative to reach the hardest to reach
we know it’s very difficult to reach
those who are hard to reach and we know
it’s very expensive to reach those that
are hard to reach but we have to do all
of that if we want to achieve the
sustainable development goals what we
need is disruptive development and this
is what we’re doing in the reach lab
here at the University of Toronto we’re
uncovering what we see to be the
ingredients of disruptive development
what are some of these ingredients first
solutions over technology we need to
find solutions technology is a
phenomenal enabler but we don’t push the
technologies unless they are solving a
problem
second politics is just as important if
not more important than dollars and
cents because if we don’t have the
political will we’re never going to
reach the hardest to reach and third
reality boots on the ground seeing with
your own eyes
smelling with your own noses hearing
with your own ears is how we’re going to
generate solutions more than any of the
theories that we’re going to write and
transcribe here at the University and
this is where you come in the disruptive
generation the work that I’m doing with
my students and we have students from
across the University of Toronto working
in this lab my students tell me that the
SDGs is their generations call it
they tell me it’s their generations
responsibility the MDGs were mine the
SDGs are theirs and I’m really
optimistic I have seen extraordinary
commitment on the part of these young
people in recognizing this to be their
generations college I have been told by
these young people that they do not see
their future life’s work in terms of
climbing rung after rung up the
corporate ladder but rather moving from
project to project solution to solution
these young people tell me that impact
is more important than profit and it eat
I’ve seen that for these young people
the world is a much smaller place
technology has made the world a much
smaller place and empathy has made the
world a much smaller place and so while
I’m a vex and I will continue to vex
about questions like how do we deliver
vaccines to children living in a slum I
expect that your generation will not be
vexed by these questions and I look
forward to hearing your solutions Thank
You professor Joseph Wald
[Applause]
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