Reproductive Freedom in the Developing World: Anna Christina Thorsheim and Family Empowerment Media

Paul Shapiro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the business for good podcast to show where we spotlight companies, making money by making the world a better place. I'm your host, Paul Shapiro. And if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the world's most pressing problems, then this is the show for you. Hello, and welcome to the 88th episode of the business for good podcast, man, did we get a lot of feedback on the last episode with the president of Olie, a lot of you folks wrote in via our website business for good podcast.com to say that you personally invested in Olie and are praying.

Yes. Literally praying that the stock goes back up. I hear you and others wrote in to give their feedback that they enjoyed hearing from a publicly traded company, as opposed to the earlier stage startups. We often feature on this show. This episode is about another kind of early stage startup, but not a for-profit company.

Instead we are featuring a newly founded charity called family empowerment media that was born out of the effective altruism movement. We have featured charities in the past on this podcast. [00:01:00] In fact, our episode with new harvest CEO, Isha guitar remains one of the more popular episodes. Go check it out.

If you didn't hear it. It's episode number 42. And while it is a charity family empowerment media tries to run like a business in that it relies heavily on me. Evidence based strategies that produce a significant return on their investment though. The return that they're seeking is not a financial one, but rather is in the form of the social change.

They are working to create mainly by empowering the use of family planning by millions of families that are seeking to have fewer children in the developing African countries started in the year 2020. The sole mission of this group is to create radio content featuring Nigerian families talking about their positive experiences with family planning, not only are donors backing these social entrepreneurs, but so is the Nigerian government.

Why? Well, on average fertility rates in Nigeria stand currently at more than five children per woman, generally speaking, the poorest countries tend to have the highest fertility rates while wealthier countries have lower fertility rates. So while in many African [00:02:00] countries, each woman. On average, more than five children in wealthier parts of the world, like South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, each woman has on average, less than two children.

The us is also at less than two children, per woman. However, immigration to the us prevents the country's population from shrinking. Now these disparate fertility rates have huge consequences since smaller family sizes typically correlated with higher quality of. Both for the mother and for the children, small family size is often associated with better health outcomes, better educational outcomes, more gender equality, and so on.

But here's the thing. It's not that women in the developing countries necessarily want to have so many children. In fact, nearly a quarter of women in the developing world want to avoid pregnancy, but. Use contraceptives that results in 85 million unintended pregnancies per year. Not only does this put women engraved danger of maternal mortality, but such high fertility rates, often doom families to inescapable cycles of poverty because of the [00:03:00] burden of caring for so many children.

And in Nigeria, you might think that there's a whack of contraceptive. But that's just not really necessarily the case these days. In fact, in Nigeria, just 5% of married women said physical access was a reason that they don't use contraceptives, lack of familiarity with contraceptives and concerns about the side effects are far more likely to deter contraceptive use.

For instance, family empowerment, media sites, a study into Nigerian states, finding that almost. One in three women believes that using contraceptives can make a woman permanently in fertile. So enter family empowerment media with the goal of using radio communications, to dispel these myths and empower women to take control of their bodies and choose both if, and when.

They add children to their families. I've often viewed family planning, both in the developing and developed countries as one of the most effective ways to help make the world a better place. Sadly, I just don't often see that many for-profit companies innovating in this space [00:04:00] leaving much of the social entrepreneurship to non-profits like family empowerment media.

We did discuss male contraceptives in episode 61 with your choice therapeutics. And we're gonna do an upcoming episode on that topic too. But for. Enjoy hearing about a new Char's cost effective work to put reproductive control in the hands of women who need it. The most. Anna Christina, welcome to the business for good podcast.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah,

Paul Shapiro: it's my pleasure. I have been following your work since the inception of your new organization just a couple years ago, and it's exciting. And I am somebody who's particularly passionate on this issue for a lot of reasons, and I have struggled to figure out like whether there are for-profit companies that can be helpful in this respect.

And I know there's a good nonprofit organizations doing work. You are one of them. So why don't you just tell us a little bit about what you're doing with the family empowerment media before we get into your background? Like in a nutshell, what does the [00:05:00] organization actually do?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So as you mentioned, we're new nonprofit.

We produce radio campaigns to address myths and misconceptions about contraception were started around two years ago. And we now reach 0.6 million listeners in Northern Nigeria with our program.

Paul Shapiro: Great. And, and just so I'm be clear. How many million did you. 5.6, 5.6 million people who, who have heard your ad so far.

Cool. Well, congratulations. That's great. So before we get into this good work that you're doing, Anna, Christina, what led you here? So, you know, if you look through your background, you obviously are very sustainability minded. You have spent. Your life trying to do good in the world. You even co-founded a for-profit company called Forex in Norway, where you're from to try to help prevent and treat mental health issues.

And now this, so what was it that led you to think, Hey, instead of going from, you know, being a for-profit founder of a company, I wanna actually start my own charity.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So I would. [00:06:00] You know, from a young age, I've thought a lot about, you know, what, what I can do to have the largest impact possible in my career.

And you know, originally I was thinking that that could be in the for-profit sector and I that's kind of where this work with fors came in. And I do think that is a very impactful path. But as I got more involved in the effective altruism community started thinking more thoroughly as well around, you know doing work, which is cost effective and really evidence based that impacts the lives of the most vulnerable I made the transition.

So my first encounter with the family planning space was when I was in high school. And I spent the summer where I did some research on the sociocultural barriers to family planning uptake in Tanzania. And I learned. About, I suppose how bad it can be for families not to have the information needed to navigate choices around reproductive decisions.

And that definitely made a, a big impact on me.[00:07:00] So as I, I was thinking more about, you know how I can have the largest possible impact. I came across the charity entrepreneurship incubation program and they have spent a full year. Doing research into the family planning space. They researched around 180 different ideas and they recommended that a new nonprofit or to be started working on mass media and specifically radio.

So for me, a lot of things kind of came together there with the focus on the cost area and also the fact that they needed a founder within the space. So, so those are some of the things that made me transit.

Paul Shapiro: So you were already a part of the effective altruism community when you were thinking about this.

And so basically the idea was presented to you saying, Hey, here's what we think is a white space in this area, essentially doing radio ad campaigns. And so you then filled that white space. That's what you're saying.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. And the type of things that they looked at during that research project was for interventions that are particularly cost effective and evidence based.

And I [00:08:00] think another thing with this intervention is the fact that it is very scalable. You can just reach a lot of people through a single channel. So yeah, those were some of the things that made them recommend the intervention. Okay.

Paul Shapiro: So for those who aren't familiar with this space, Anna, Christina, like why does it matter?

So people are not using contraceptives, they are using contraceptives. Why does this matter for the world?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So, you know, when it comes to family planning and specifically the work that we're doing what you're seeing is an intention behavior gap. So you have, you know, families that are looking to space or limit the number of children that they have, but they don't have access to the information or they're blocked by other things.

And. It's this matters for a number of reasons. One of them is, you know might be important for people or it is important for people to be able to make those really important decisions with access to information. It has a huge impact on mother's health and it has a huge impact on children's health and in general A lot of other things as well, that kind of is [00:09:00] related to, to the fact that, you know, it's, it's so fundamental to, to the family and the society.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So you're doing this work in Nigeria, and I want to get into what your actual content of the ads are saying, but let me just first ask you before that, like how do people get access? Let's say in Nigeria to contraceptives and Nigeria. Yeah.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: So we chose Nigeria through a very analytical process.

We kind of started out completely neutral about where we were going to bring this intervention in. And we looked at about 70 countries and model things out to look at where we could have the, the largest impact and where the intervention was the most needed. So. Nigeria was shortlisted at one of the top five countries.

And then we broke it into five regions because Nigeria is huge and it's, it's quite different in different parts of the country. So those are some of the, yeah. And, and, and the things we were looking at in that location selection was, you know, what is the state of the maternal health there, what are the [00:10:00] actual bottlenecks is there supply to contraception?

And then what's the cost of operating in the different regions. So the north of Nigeria just stood out as a very good place to work from all of those angles. In terms of where people access, contraceptive contraceptives in the region that we work a lot of that is through public clinics.

So. There is some availability of commodities there. Mm-hmm

Paul Shapiro: okay. And so to my understanding Africa has on, on average, the highest fertility rate per woman in, in the world. Is that right? Yeah. Meaning the most, the most births per woman in the world.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. In the state that we work it's over six births per woman.

Mm-hmm and that, yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Right. And, and so what is the, what would you say is, is the concern that you're trying to address? So if, if women are having on average, you know, five or six children throughout the course of their wife, what is the problem that you're trying to address here?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: It is the fact that when women have access to the information all the information that you [00:11:00] know, they, they might wanna have access to, to make decisions about their fertility that they should have that access. And then that. Impact that has on maternal and child health is sort of come from that.

That is the issue that we are addressing.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. And how right now when you think about like the barriers to contraceptives for women, let's say in Nigeria, like what is it that is preventing them from gaining access to contraceptives and, and reproductive freedom?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So before we launched our pilot we did a lot of research to identify those barriers and.

Some of the things that came up are, for example fair of side effects. So in the region that we work, 62% of women are either unsure or they think that they can get cancer from using contraception. A lot of people around the same number percentage believe that you can call sterility. There are other things like lack of spa communication, for example, that.

Women are not comfortable discussing these things with their husbands and, and stigma that are also preventing uptake. [00:12:00] So yeah, those are, those are things that we are addressing with our content.

Paul Shapiro: So how are you addressing them? Like if I were in Nigeria and I turn on the radio and I hear, excuse me, and, and I hear one of the family empowerment media ads, what am I gonna hear?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So we have two forms of content. We have our, our campaigns are really intensive. So one of the things we have are the short format shows, which are 60 seconds long ads which includes. Two characters discussing an issue and bringing forth a message in that short form. So those are generally quite knowledge specific.

And they go on air 10 times a day, and then we have our long form shows and they last for 20 minutes and we have a range of different formats. So we have call shows where people call up and ask their questions. And then we have experts that answer them directly on air. We also produce serial drama for this next rollout that we're producing.

So for that one, you follow actually three families over an eight week or eight episode [00:13:00] long drama where you have different characters that are encountering new information and integrating that. And finally, you know start, start using contraception in, in, in many of the cases we also have celebrities and religious leaders and other important.

Role models on air for, for different forms of shows. Yeah. Great.

Paul Shapiro: So I, I, I know that you're a very evidence based organization. So what are you doing to ensure that before you spend your money running these ads, that they actually are going to be effective in increasing contraceptive use?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So our format is based on the best available evidence. So we spent, spent a lot of time figuring out, you know, how, what type of format does seem to be the most impactful when producing these types of shows and these type of campaigns. And then we do a lot of prototyping as well. And we look for early indicators of behavior change.

So that are thing like obvious things like people understand them and they can retell the message. And they, they get the right things out of the different shows and, and ads. But also things like putting them on air and [00:14:00] testing. How, how many have actually told their friends about this, for example, And then longer term to to measure that the more long term indicators we're doing larger surveys and we hope to do an RCT in the coming years too.

Paul Shapiro: So what is the result like, have you, I mean, I'm sure you have anecdotal results from women who are using contraceptives who may not have otherwise used them, but what are the results like, have you found that, you know, for every ad that you run a specific number of people's behavior has. Yeah.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: So one of the things we did during our pilot was we worked with the call center and then for every ad at the end of every ad that we ran, we had the name like the number of that call center.

And then we were able to track, you know, how many people called in and partly that was to learn, you know, what type of material resonates more and we should also spend more resources on in the future. We found a five that the call center got five times more calls from that. So those are some, some early indicators.

This pilot was primarily, you know, targeted towards [00:15:00] learning to improve the content more. And then, you know yeah, but all of the leading indicators look really good. Are the the way people also rate our shows in terms of how entertaining they are and how, how much they learn from them are between eight and nine out of 10.

So that's also another quite promising, early result. Nice.

Paul Shapiro: So, so how cost effective is it then? Anna, Christina Wiki. You're in order to run these ad you're, you're reaching over 5 million people. Like how much have you had to spend to have that type of. Yeah,

Anna Christina Thorsheim: it's, it's, it's a very cheap program per person.

I mean it costs us $14 for one minute of air time. So our, our

Paul Shapiro: best, sorry for, so one minute of air time reaches, how many people

Anna Christina Thorsheim: so that reaches the audience base of 5.6 million listeners.

Paul Shapiro: So just to be clear, $14 to reach 5.6 million people.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah, it's, it's a very cheap , it's very, I mean, we do get really good rates because we have a, a good relationship with the radio station and they're, they're giving us some discounts for for doing these [00:16:00] types of programs, given the, the fact that they are beneficial for, for the health of the community.

So yeah, we have our best estimate for long term cost effectiveness is 2,600 dollars per life saved. Yeah, and those are based on the results that development media international had on their RCT in be Faso with discounts on sort of generalizability and, and so forth.

Paul Shapiro: Hmm.

And, and so whose life is saved for those $2,600? The life of a mother who would've died during childbirth or the wife of a child who would've died in poverty? Like what, what is the, the wife that is being saved there?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So that's actually only taking into account the life of the mother. So, it's if you think about the risk of dying as a result of an unintended pregnancy, that's, that's sort of what we're looking at.

And then the number of unintended pregnancies that Are averted.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. I mean, it does seem to me like the benefit, obviously that's a very good benefit, but because high fertility rates are so highly associated with being trapped in poverty, [00:17:00] that by working in this realm with this type of an intervention, you may be the, the good that you may be doing maybe much more than.

Preventing maternal deaths, which is of course a good in and of itself, but to help people escape poverty and have a higher quality of life seems like the like a hundred percent of the time that your work is having an impact. That's an impact that it's having.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: absolutely. You know, if you take into account all the benefits of the family planning intervention it does start looking quite ridiculously cost effective.

I mean also thinking about things like the impacts on education as well, and There's also a lot of evidence showing the health of the impact on health of children and you know, UN under nutrition, even just from spacing between like increased spacing between pregnancies producing, you know, the risk of, of children dying before the age of five.

There's all these additional benefits that You know, if we model them, it would be like even more cost effective.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So let me ask you something, [00:18:00] Anna, I'm sure you get asked often. So, you know, you're, you're essentially a, a Norwegian who is running a program trying to help Nigerian women have fewer children.

Is there an optical problem for you here in terms of whether or not there are Nigerians running this program? I know you have a lot of Nigerian input into the ads and that the people who are in the ads are Nigerian themselves. But is this a criticism that you have come under? And if so, how do you respond to it?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So, you know, we have a model like we work directly with local partners in the communities that we operate in. So that basically means that we identify an grassroot organization an organization working in that region. And then we are. Doing the whole project sort of with them.

So we sort of stand for a lot of the research work and then we involve stakeholders in, in that whole process. So that's, that's been a way for us to, you know, make sure that we Do this stakeholder [00:19:00] engagement well, and that, you know, we yeah. Make sure to, to not make any mistakes. In that regard, we also have a partnership with the ministry of health in the region that we work.

So they review all our material and give us input on that before it goes on air. So I mean, the thing is we, we haven't been asked. From anyone like in Nigeria about this. And I think that's because the health benefits are just so obvious to the people in the community. So yeah, I guess that's what I have to say about that.

Sure.

Paul Shapiro: And why women only like is there not a possibility for vasectomies? You know, if there are families that already have had a couple kids and they don't want more is there an option for male contraception?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: So it's, it's very uncommon in, in the region that we work for to have that quite a bit of our material is targeted towards men, I would say maybe 40%.

And in terms of having, you know, male characters that take part in the dramas. And so so yeah, we, we actually don't encourage [00:20:00] specific method. In our radio shows, we encourage our listeners to go to the primary healthcare clinic where they can get more information about with methods might suit them best.

So and then we just assume that, you know at the clinic, I suppose they you'll have like the general distribution of what methods people choose.

Paul Shapiro: And, and is vasectomy one of them. So I know you said earlier that there's a common misperception among folks in the region that using contraceptives could have side effects.

I, I was reading that there are some people who were basically saying, if you put in, I U D it can move around in your body and harm you and, and other myths surrounding some of this stuff. But for male contraceptives, obviously condoms are one option vasectomies or another are those things that are popularly used in Nigeria.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah, condoms as well are very uncommonly used. So Yeah, it's, it's something we've thought about, you know if we should have more material that presents some of these other options, this show here, we like the next we're [00:21:00] launching a nine month long campaign in about the month. And one of the shows we sort of give more in depth information about the, about five methods.

Those two are not amongst them. But but yeah, I suppose there, there is some potential to do some more communication on those methods

Paul Shapiro: too. Mm-hmm okay. So this is, you know, it seems like very important work, obviously, Anna, Christina, and I'm wondering like how much money has your nonprofit organization raised so far and how much do you think that you need in order to effectuate the goals?

Which I, I presume would be seeing tangible reductions in fertility rates. Is that, is that what you would say? The goal is.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Well, I, I would say the goal is to you know, support women to realize their family planning intentions, and that does result in fewer unintended pregnancies. And then, you know, UN effect of that is improving maternal health and child health and, and many other.

We've raised around $500,000 in total. And yeah, we're looking the thing about our intervention is that it is very, [00:22:00] very scalable. So funding is definitely one thing that is, I know if we yeah, our, our projected budget for the next year is around 850,000, which would allow us to. Also start scaling up in three other locations.

So having access to that amount of funding would allow us to you know, scale our programs up a lot more. And then over time, Over the next 10 years, we have this path to, you know, spending around 10 million a year, which would allow us to like work across a lot of, or all the countries in Africa where we currently think this intervention would be cost effective to to deal with the the specific problem.

Sure.

Paul Shapiro: And how many folks work right now at the organiz?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: So it's about six people who are hired directly to family and empowerment media. And then we work with a bunch of partners within Nigeria, too. So depending on where where we are in the process for example, during actual production, there's a lot of people.

And during like our surveys, there's a lot of people [00:23:00] we can, can be up to maybe 25 at most mm-hmm . But then, you know, once those specific projects are over, it's, it's the six of us that that is sort of hired directly.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. So let me ask you, then this seems like, you know, obviously a problem that requires some nonprofit organization interventions, like what you are doing, but there obviously is a connection to the, for profit realm.

Obviously the contraceptives are being paid for by somebody and being produced by some company. So. Do you think that there is a role or more of a role for the private sector in the for-profit space to be getting involved in family planning in the developing world? And if so, like what do you think those companies are?

So if you're going back and you're thinking I'm gonna found a company, not just a, a nonprofit, but a company to start addressing family planning issues, like, what do you think are some of the white space opportunities for entrepreneurs out there who want to do something to put an or in the water and help advance family planning?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So, you know, in certain regions there is still a [00:24:00] supply issue. So, you know, we work only on the information and I suppose the demand side of things. And there are a lot of regions that, you know, if we could go in there and have our programs on air and they would actually have access to commodities.

That would be really impactful, but currently it there's just not. So, so that might be you know, that that's a problem to, to be solved whether that is, you know, something that a for profit could do. And in terms of like like the, the additional barriers to starting a, a for profit in that space.

I, I'm not quite sure, but that's definitely a problem I suppose as well, you know improving some of the commodities that, that are available and, you know for example, it's, it is, is an issue in some of the regions that we we've considered working in, in where. There might not be enough health workers to that are trained to insert some, some commodities.

And then yeah, maybe like developing something that could be a bit easier to use that are also [00:25:00] not having too many impacts on. Hormonal systems and so forth. So I think there's some, and I know there's some exciting work on that R and D front too. That might also be a space for, for a, for profit maybe.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. You know, we had on the show some time ago, a Y Combinator backed company called your choice therapeutics, which is basically trying to develop male contraceptives cuz you know, right now it is basically condoms in vasectomies and neither one of those are often that popular with men. And so the question is, is there something.

Something else that could be maybe less invasive or less inconvenient. And so it does seem like there is a technological white space here and to create more options for male contraceptives. There's also, and we're gonna do an upcoming episode on this no scalpel vasectomies now, which are basically you know, you don't have to actually cut open the scrotum.

Much less invasive operation to do. And so hopefully advances in those type of techniques will also lower the barrier that some men may face to. Or some men always may perceive [00:26:00] to be a part, an active part of the family planning themselves.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. That's, that's really exciting. I, I'm definitely excited to see the future of those types of solutions.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Cool. So I, in the family planning world war, maybe even not, are there any companies just that you wish existed? Are there any things that if you were going back and you weren't running this, you think, Hey, maybe this is a good company or you're thinking, you know, you hope somebody listening will start this company to do something on this issue.

That would be helpful.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah. So I think there's quite a lot of potential in thinking through solutions to like improve you know, social interactions, I think you know, having more people connecting I can imagine just, you know, enabling that in, in a better way with, especially like people in cities.

I think that's, that's a space that I'm pretty interested in. I'm very interested in the clean meat and like the future of that I would love to see more work. I mean, this is definitely something your, your listeners and a lot of the people in your show has, has been or are working on.

So those are also spaces I I'm excited about. [00:27:00] I would also say that, you know, starting a a for profit and being a part of founders pledge, for example, and, and giving away money. When exiting or, you know, at, at a point after having earned quite a lot of money is also a very impactful thing that I think it would be exciting for, for listeners to consider.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. Yeah. And just for folks not familiar with the founder's pledge, it's basically an initiative where entrepreneurs commit prior to making their their fortunes. That they'll donate a portion. I don't, I think is it, is it 1% or is it more, I forget what it is, but there's some, there's some pledge to give away some portion of what you may make, if you ever have a successful exit.

Is that right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Of course, you know, the irony is that most startups fail. So a lot of these comp you know, lot of these founders who make these pledges won't have anything to give, but those that do might have spectacular amounts. So hopefully they will stick to it.

It's not a binding pledge. Nobody can Sue you if you don't if you don't fulfill it, but hopefully the social pressure having publicly committed to doing it will lead you to be a little [00:28:00] bit more charitable. Once you make your millions. Maybe those those founders who exit will be listening to this today and think that family empowerment, excuse me, family empowerment media is the thing that they want to support.

So if that is the case, Anna, Christina, how can they get in touch with you?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah, please get in touch. Maybe we can put my email in the. Description or something like that. If, if you share, can also visit our website and definitely keen to talk to people who are excited about our

Paul Shapiro: work. Okay, well, we'll put your email in the show notes for this episode, which is gonna be@businessforgoodpodcast.com.

And finally, Anna, Christina, you know, there's a lot of people who may be impressed by what you're doing. They're psyched to see somebody who started her own organization and is doing good in the world already so quickly. So have there been any resources that were helpful for you that you would recommend to those people who are interested more either in this space?

Anything that's been helpful for you in your journey?

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah, I would say maybe I have two pieces of advice. I suppose one of them is just taking all [00:29:00] the opportunities. You have to, you know, learn the skills needed to start something. So that could be you know, early on taking on volunteering opportunities and really learning about how different organizations are run.

And yeah it could also be internships at organizations that you are. Where you're really impressed by the impact they're having. So that that's one thing just taking on the big opportunities for growth. And then the other thing is to, you know, read, read a lot, maybe and try to, to learn through there's there's such a wealth of information of you know, good books that Allows you to get an insight into an issue and just being, you know, self, self driven and, and seeking out those that knowledge I think, you know, can, can really enable you over the, the long term to to get a really good understanding or different fields.

Paul Shapiro: Are there any books that are particularly useful for.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Yeah, I would say one book I, I really love is poor economics. It, it's just a very [00:30:00] evidence based and practical description of what we actually know about what works to address some of the big challenges for, for the global poor a big fan of the lean startup and principles of Ray Dalio.

I think they they're both great. Books for people who are looking to build organizations, especially learning organizations. And yeah, I would say that one of the things for us as, as an organization is we've had this very strong, like lean startup, I suppose methodology being, being used from the beginning of just, you know, once you get started identifying what is the big thing that you have to validate or learn in order to get to the next stage?

And then going out and doing that right away. so if you're gonna fail, you're gonna fail fast and reducing the uncertainties of, of, of the work quickly. And then finally, maybe so wanna recommend the life we can save of Peter singer or any, you know similar books to that as an introduction to effective ultra.

Paul Shapiro: Great. Well, we've had Peter singer on the show [00:31:00] before, and we'll link to that episode as well for folks who want to check it out@businessforgoodpodcast.com. And I have I read, or at least heard of all the books you mentioned except for one. So for those of you who also maybe have not heard of them, I'm just gonna restate it.

This will be in the show notes two, but it's. Poor economics, a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty, which looks like a really interesting book. And I am putting it on my to read list as well. So thanks so much for that recommendation, Anna, Christina, and thanks to you for all that you're doing to try to make the world a better place.

Really grateful to you.

Anna Christina Thorsheim: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Paul Shapiro: Thanks for listening. We hope you found use in this episode. If so, don't keep it to yourself. Please leave us a five star rating on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And as always, we hope you will be in the business of doing good.