VIDEO: Good Fortune

Silva Adhiambo is a midwife living in Kibera, notorious as the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. To outsiders' eyes, her neighborhood isn't much of a home. But it's her home and it's where she runs her business. Now, the United Nations and the Kenyan government are in partnership to relocate people in Kibera as part of a slum upgrading program. It's a massive foreign assistance project that Adhiambo doesn't support.

"If they demolish these houses and evict us, I won't have a place for these women to give birth," says Adhiambo. "That's the problem with leaving Kibera - it will be like losing my job."

This video is a short taste of the documentary "Good Fortune" and raises thought-provoking questions about the tension between foreign assistance and the people this money helps. Does foreign assistance reach the people it's meant to reach? Who's accountable for the money? How effective is foreign assistance? It's these questions that led us here at Bread for the World to make reform of U.S. foreign assistance the centerpiece of our 2011 Offering of Letters. Foreign aid is necessary, but it can be done better, and one way is to take into account the needs of people like Adhiambo.

(The documentary's director offered this update on Adhiambo's life in a June 2010 website post.)

This story is part of our Wednesday ViewChange video series.