&gt; What you appeared to be advocating for (at least how I read it) is dropping into a country and giving people money to buy cleaning supplies.<p>C&#x27;mon, you really thought I was &#x27;advocating&#x27; for each of us to buy a plane ticket and fly into some country, and hand people money to buy cleaning supplies.<p>Microlending is not giving people cash. It&#x27;s giving people loans. That microlending has limited&#x2F;negligible effect has also been well known for some time (as you know as well since you linked one of the studies, but the same organization has a new meta-study over multiple countries also worth looking into). The same organization has much better study results with giving people cash. Every study of cash grants (conditional or unconditional from Oportunidades onwards) I have ever seen is net positive, and most very positive.