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'We’re not yet focused on many of the poorest countries in the world, in part because the testing isn’t that good yet': Devex President

Raj Kumar, Devex President & Editor-in-Chief joins Yahoo Finance's On The Move panel to break down how the company set up a digital map to asses the global COVID-19 response.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Off of the session highs but not by much, the Dow is still up over 970 points. Want to talk about how the coronavirus, COVID-19, is changing the world all of us exist in. And one of the big questions surrounding this is what's going to happen with global development. Raj Kumar is president and editor-in-chief of Devex. To give you an idea of their scope, they serve a community of 1 million global development professionals worldwide. He joins us now. And I guess one of the issues that the people in your community are dealing with but some of us are experiencing is this concept of contactless delivery. What are the ramifications of that going forward?

RAJ KUMAR: Yeah, thanks, Adam. Nice to be with you. I mean, this is an industry of people who are on the frontlines of some of the poorest countries in the world dealing with humanitarian crises, and they're scrambling just like everybody else, right? Just like every other industry, trying to figure out, how do we change the way we work?

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And so one of the things that we've highlighted recently at Devex is this Turkish-based organization that has set up a digital map where if you need support or aid, let's say to support a Syrian refugee, you can say, this is what's required in our local school. These are the materials and supplies. And then a donor, an individual or an organization, can go online and donate those things, send them through a third-party service, and get them delivered. And it's kind of an idea of getting to contactless aid delivery.

You know, the basic idea is can we find a way to stop sending aid workers and not-for-profit professionals all over the world? Travel is a big part of how this field works. Is there a way to kind of get around that in these extreme circumstances that we're facing? And this is just one example, but I think it points to how dramatically people are struggling to figure out, how does a field work, you know, when you can't travel and you need to be in a lot of that the lowest income parts of the world? You need to go to refugee camps. You need to work in places, in slums and urban slums, where people are packed in. How do we change the way we actually work to respond to the realities that we're in today. So big questions that our community is asking, this is among them.

JULIE HYMAN: Raj, it's Julie Hyman here. Thanks for joining us. As you talk about, the challenge facing these various NGOs is-- they're enormous. What is their-- what are they telling you right now about how optimistic or pessimistic they are? I mean, certainly, the sort of talk has been that we are going to see this pandemic really rip through the poorest, most densely-populated areas, as you were just discussing. Do they feel like that they can do enough or anything to stem that?

RAJ KUMAR: Yeah, there's a lot of concern. I mean, these are people who are doers, and they're out on the frontlines working every day on these issues, and they're used to big challenges, of course. But you know, there's a lot of concern because in many of the countries we're talking about, the vast majority of workers are in the informal sector. You know, I was in a slum in Nairobi just a few months ago, and you know, average people there, they have to get out of their house. They've got to go and sell fruits and vegetables in the street. There isn't an employer who's sending them a paycheck every week or two.

So it's really hard to do social distancing in these environments. People have to leave the house. They have to work. And so what we see is the likely scenario that you're going to have this pandemic spread more quickly through some of the poorer countries in the world where there is that dense population, inability to isolate. And yeah, it's true, some of these populations are a lot younger. It's not like northern Italy. You know, that's one of the potential advantages. But there's also a lot of underlying health conditions in many of the poorest places in the world.

So there is a lot of concern, and the nonprofits, the NGOs, the international agencies, this is what they're here for. This is why they exist, right? To try to do this kind of work. But in many cases, they lack even the basic personal protective equipment. There was a big uproar in India recently because the almost a million community health workers, their job is-- they're members the community. Their job is to go door-to-door and provide health services. They weren't even given very basic cloth masks or any kind of protective gear.

So there is a real concern, and it's growing. Most of the focus, understandably, right now is what's happening in New York, what's happening in Spain, what's happening in a lot of the Western world where you see a tremendous peak of the virus. We're not yet focused on many of the poorest countries in the world in part because the testing isn't that good yet. We don't know the real numbers. But the people I talked to in our field, they feel like this is going to go through phases, and the next big phase is going to see large countries in the developing world with very large case loads of this virus and big consequences, big social disruption, big economic disruption in a lot of these parts of the world.

Raj, it's Julia La Roche, and we certainly hear the growing concern there. What can be done-- you were mentioning the PPE, for example, but what can be done from even the business community? What can they do to help mitigate some of this? Is there anything that can help move the needle for you guys?

RAJ KUMAR: Yeah, I mean, businesses are stepping up I think in a lot of the world, but these are some of the most challenging environments to step up in. And a lot of this is going to down in the long run things like supply chains. You know, a lot of the biggest corporations here in the US, you know, when we go to Starbucks and we buy coffee, where is it coming from? It's come from a lot of the poorest countries in the world. So making sure those supply chains can stay strong, that the farmers at the end of that supply chain are able to keep their families safe and secure and have the resources to survive a pandemic like this, you know, I think big corporates have a huge stake in ensuring that these systems stay up and running.

And I think they're trying to figure it out just like the rest of us. Commitment is there, but what we're not yet seeing was a lot of flow of funding. So when I talk to the nonprofits, they're concerned that the big, private foundations, they see their endowments shrinking as the stock markets decline. They might be hesitant to spend and increase their spending. Or maybe they'll put more money into COVID-19 response, but the annual giving might slow down or the individual giving to a lot of nonprofits might slow down-- you know, the galas, the charity balls-- as average donors see their 401(k)s shrink.

So I think there's a lot of financial pressure in this field. You know, we're-- it's not the hospitality industry. It's not restaurants. it's hotels. It's not on the frontline in that sense, but it's a secondary one that is going to feel the pinch.

ADAM SHAPIRO: All right, Raj Kumar, we appreciate your being here, the president and editor-in-chief at Devex. And we wish-- it's what, a million people in the community you serve? We wish everybody the best.