What we do, my students in my lab and I, is we buy Barbies from Goodwill and Value Village, we dress her in clothes that have been made by seamstresses and we send her out with a canopy handbook.

Opened a theme park through a license in Kuwait a year and a half ago called The 99 Village Theme Park 300,000 square feet, 20 rides, all with our characters a couple back to school licenses in Spain and Turkey.

What was the meaning of this moment of grace? Was it purely the product of a collective delusion, an emotional Potemkin village of sorts, encouraged, if not conceived, by the authorities to restore some level of self assurance among France s depressed citizens?

But finding new things that can be done successfully is tricky, because it requires knowing what you will need and whether you will be able to procure it. This is why Jeffrey Sachs s Millennium Villages project has faltered, as the journalist Nina Munk s recent book shows.

As in my youth, I saw once again the challenges and hardship of rural poverty. Yet I also saw, once again, the power of community spirit to overcome it the same sense of solidarity and determination that launched Korea s rural modernization five decades ago.