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If a girl in a poor country goes to school, she will probably have a more comfortable life than if she stays at home. She will be less likely to marry while still a child, and therefore less likely to die in childbirth. So, not surprisingly, there is an Indian charity that tries to get girls into school and ensure they learn something, and there are Western philanthropists willing to pay for its work. What is noteworthy is how they have gone about this transaction.

On July 13th the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, presents the results of the world's first large development-impact bond, which paid for girls' education in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan.

In this novel way of funding charitable work, a financial institution gives money to a charity, which tries to achieve various specified outcomes.

If a neutral arbiter rules that it has succeeded, a donor or philanthropist repays the investor, plus a bonus. If it fails, the investor loses some or all of its money. This is more convoluted than the usual way of funding charitable projects, in which a donor gives money to a charity, which spends it according to a pre-agreed plan. The donor tries to ensure the money is not wasted by keeping track of inputs-the number of solar panels installed or vaccinations given, say. Often, no one knows whether the intervention did much good.

In this case, the more complicated approach did achieve something. Educate Girls, the charity, identified 837 out-of-school girls aged 7-14 in the villages where it was active, and enrolled 768 of them. By using volunteers to teach both boys and girls in village schools for a few hours a week, it managed to raise test scores substantially relative to a control group.

So the investor, UBS Optimus Foundation, will be repaid by the Children's Investment Fund Foundation. For Safeena Husain, who runs Educate Girls, the process was satisfying as the results.

Instead of having to send tedious reports to a donor about how she was spending money, she concentrated on solving problems. Educate Girls found, for example, that many pupils could not do long division because they did not understand the concept of place value. So its workers gave additional classes. ID insight,the independent assessor, found that the main boost to children test stones came in the third year of the programmer, when Educate Girls hit its stride. It would be good if development -impact bonds teach donors to focus on outcomes.

Creating the development-impact bond was also complicated and time-consuming. Staff from several organisations spent months pinning down what Educate Girls would aim to achieve, how progress would be measured and what would be repaid. Outside experts were drafted in. The randomised controlled trial that IDinsight used to assess the teaching was, like many such trials, neither simple nor cheap. More development-impact bonds are now under way or under discussion, some involving big donors like the World Bank, USAID and DfID (America's and Britain's aid agencies). But they will probably remain infrequent oddities in the aid landscape.

1.The author writes this passage in order to __________.

A. urge the public to be aware of the need to help

B. attract more investors to newly-started researchers

C. Introduce a different approach to helping the poor

D. explain the reason for the popularity of a new project.

2.Which of the following statements about the new practice of charity is TRUE?

A. It favors results over process

B. The donor keep tracks of inputs

C. A neutral assessor will be paid

D. The money is spent based on a pre-agreed plan.

3.Concerning the development-impact bond, what can be inferred from the passage?

A. It will be popular in the near future

B. It has achieved great success in India

C. It is very effective since it saves time and trouble

D. It is very costly to carry out the development -impact bond

4.What is the attitude of the author towards the development -impact bond?

A. Doubtful   B. Neutral

C. Positive   D. Negative

高三英语阅读理解中等难度题

少年,再来一题如何?
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