The Idealist Quotes

“I know that if you spend enough on each person person in a village, you will change their lives. If you put in enough resources-enough mzungu,foreigners, technical assistance, and money-lives change. I know that....The problem is, when you walk, what happens? -Simon Bland”
― Nina Munk, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty

“What can we do? We cannot enforce. We try to explain. We want to empower. But no one can come and change them if they do not want themselves -Ahmed Maalim Mohamed”
― Nina Munk, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty

“It’s never enough,” he repeated, “but it is so much more than we had before. Without the Millennium project there would be no drugs, there would be no surgical equipment, there would be no way to operate the generator—I would be redundant most of the time. They say funding will continue, but someday it will stop, and when the funding stops, most likely everything we have done will be put to waste. I do not see how we are going to continue after they have left.”
― Nina Munk, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty