Good TED Talk: Social experiments to fight poverty

As my students at ICU choose research areas to pursue for their 1st year essays or consider a research field to major it, I think TED talks like this can inspire and stimulate thought.

Esther Duflo, a development economist and fellow at MIT, speaks about how small but well-designed development assistant projects such as providing bed nets to fight malaria or basic immunizations to impoverished regions can lead to scientifically measurable results in improving the quality of life in certain regions. Although fighting poverty can seem like a futile efforts at times, she calls for commitment to continue to fund projects that work and make a difference.

Another thing I like about this video is how this French speaker of English starts by warning the audience about her quite heavy accent, but then delivers the talk with excellent articulation and passion and control of her message. Japanese speakers of English should also accept that an accent is not an impediment to successful public speaking. The suprasegmental aspects of speech such as emphasis and thought grouping, and of course the confidence of delivery is what makes a good speaker. I want to use this video to show my presentation skills classes.