The Power of Positive Deviance

TWO

Childhood Malnutrition in Vietnam

From Peril to Possibility

The Chinese character for the word crisis is composed of two ideograms: one is most closely translated as “imminent peril”; the second reflects the idea that new possibilities lurk in the shadow of uncertainty. Nothing better captures the circumstances that greeted Jerry and Monique when they arrived in Vietnam. Jerry provides the following account.

VIETNAM RECEIVED SUBSIDIZED RICE imports from its allies during the war. These shipments masked wartime disruptions and the low productivity of its collective farms. Following the war, a border dispute with China and deterioration of the Soviet economy brought an abrupt end to this source of relief. In the late eighties, by government ...