On the Ground in Malawi: Stories of Change with Canva & GiveDirectly

In a short film produced by Canva, I traveled to Malawi to meet families receiving direct cash support through Canva’s partnership with GiveDirectly. I’m David Begnaud, a journalist who has spent the last 25 years telling stories about everyday people doing extraordinary things. In that video — and now in this article — I share what I saw, heard, and felt: people lifted by dignity and trust, a simple cash transfer changing day-to-day life, and a corporate commitment that is trying to do good at scale. Canva has already provided tens of millions in direct cash support and has pledged a further $100 million to expand this model. What follows is my on-the-ground report from Malawi, woven with context, evidence, and reflections about why unconditional cash transfers work, how they reach people, and what real transformation looks like when you trust people to make the best choices for themselves.

📍 Why I Went to Malawi — The Purpose of This Reporting

I went to Malawi not just to see poverty, but to understand dignity. Malawi is one of the poorest countries on earth. Nearly 70% of the population lives in extreme poverty. I didn’t go to ask whether poverty exists — anyone with a map knows it does — I went to ask what happens when people living in extreme poverty receive direct cash with no strings attached.

Canva’s partnership with GiveDirectly caught my attention because it flips the traditional charity model. Instead of guessing what people need and sending goods or programs from afar, this partnership gives people money directly and trusts them to use it. That trust is the lens I used to look at everything in Malawi.

My reporting focused on several things: who received money, how they used it, what immediate economic effects I could observe, and whether there were surprising outcomes — especially dignity and community-level changes that aren’t easy to quantify. Along the way I met families, watched communities celebrate, and saw concrete investments: floors, homes, schools, and a clinic that started because people decided it was what they needed most.

💬 Meeting People: Names, Faces, and First Reactions

When you travel in a place like Malawi, and you’re there as someone whose job is to notice, the human details matter most. In the villages where Canva and GiveDirectly have worked, I met people whose names and choices told the story better than any statistic.

I met a young father who had named his son Wonderful. That name was a small, defiant act of faith — a belief in a future that could be better. I met a mother, Ida, and her husband Edwin, who told me that with the $550 transfer they could buy fertilizer, fix their home, and send their daughter, Fortunate, to school.

One of the most vivid scenes was when a village chief called everyone together and dozens of phones started buzzing at once. The villagers didn’t know what to expect. When the mobile alerts confirmed the money had arrived, the celebration was immediate — cheering, dancing, singing. You could feel joy unitary and unbridled — people jumping, calling across fields, hugging one another. It was pure, and in that moment it was obvious: this was not just money. It was permission. Permission to breathe.

And then there was Dorothy, who was among the first to get her cash. She walked five steps after receiving it and bought food for neighborhood children. Patrick received his money and used it to go buy corn — but he walked away from a price that felt unfair and chose to buy from neighbors instead. That small decision led to a ripple that is a microcosm of what cash does: it puts choice back in the hands of people and circulates value inside communities.

💸 The Cash Model: How Much, How It’s Given, and Why It’s Radical

One of the most quoted figures from our time there was $550. That’s the amount many people received in a single transfer in this program. It may not sound like a lot by Western standards, but in the context of Malawi — where incomes are extremely low and the choice between food and school fees is daily and brutal — it’s significant.

Here’s what makes this approach radical and effective:

• No strings attached: Recipients decide how to spend the money. There are no mandates dictating it be used for one specific purpose.
• Speed and dignity: Money arrives directly to recipients via mobile transfers or roadside agents (we observed both), minimizing bureaucracy and enabling immediate use.
• Trust-based: Programs like GiveDirectly intentionally center trust — trusting recipients to make the best decisions for their households.
• Local economic boost: When recipients spend, local merchants and neighbors benefit. That circulation can raise consumption across entire areas — not just for recipients.

When the money landed in phones or was handed out by a roadside agent, the reaction was not merely relief. It was a reclaiming of agency. A distant donor — through an organization like Canva or GiveDirectly — can provide a nudge. But it is the person in the village who decides how to change a life, and that choice matters.

🏠 What People Bought: Cement, Corn, Floors, and Futures

What did people actually do with the money? I followed several households and saw repeatable patterns that make a lot of sense when you know what daily life looks like there.

Common early uses were:

• Home repairs and improvements: Ida used her transfer to buy cement to make a floor. A cement floor is more than comfort — it is a health intervention. Dirt floors promote disease and make life harder. A floor is, in effect, long-term investment in safety and health.
• Food purchases: Dorothy bought food for neighborhood children immediately after receiving funds. Food security is often the most urgent need and understandably a first use.
• Agricultural inputs: Fertilizer, seeds, and tools that increase future yield. Improved harvests can make transfers more sustainable by raising future incomes.
• Education: Fees and supplies to send children to school. Ida said that her daughter Fortunate could go to school now.
• Community contributions: In Kasone Village, after receiving cash, people collectively contributed $3 each toward a medical clinic. That clinic now provides prenatal and pediatric care several days a week.

What struck me was not just what people bought — it was how they prioritized. Immediate needs (food, repairs) often come first, but the cash also enabled investments with longer horizons: floors, fertilizer, clinic contributions, and school fees. There was a rhythm to these decisions, and it was humane and sensible.

🩺 A Clinic Built From Cash: How Collective Choices Matter

One of the most striking community outcomes I witnessed was in Kasone Village. Canva and GiveDirectly channeled roughly $30 million in cash to villages across Malawi over four years, and the results there were tangible.

Families used their transfers to rebuild homes and pay school fees. They also pooled resources for public goods. Each person contributed roughly $3 toward a small medical clinic — not a lot on its face, but enough together to build a place that now provides care for pregnant women and children. The clinic is staffed by local healthcare workers several days a week. That clinic likely prevented tragedies like the one Maria described to me:

"When my two-year-old died of malaria, the nearest hospital was six miles away, and there was no way to get there except on foot."

Now, with a clinic in the community, the chance of timely treatment increases dramatically. The clinic is an example of people choosing priorities that meet shared needs, not just household needs. When you give people agency and money, they sometimes choose to invest not only in themselves, but in shared infrastructure that benefits everyone.

📈 Economic Ripple Effects: Circulation, Consumption, and Community Gains

There is a simple economic truth that I saw over and over: cash circulates. When a person receives a transfer and buys goods locally, the merchant on the other side of that transaction receives income. That merchant may then pay a neighbor, invest in more stock, or buy seeds — and the money keeps moving.

That circulation explains why areas around recipients sometimes experience increased consumption even when not everyone receives cash. The money has local multiplier effects.

Some observations and implications:

• Recipients increase consumption immediately, which raises demand in local markets.
• Merchants benefit and may restock, which can boost local economic activity.
• Recipients often pay forward help to neighbors or family, creating a social safety net that is informal but effective.
• Collective investments — like the clinic — show how small individual contributions aggregate into public goods.

There are nuances: the size of the transfer matters, market access matters, and supply constraints can limit benefits. But in the villages I visited, the cash transfers did not sit idle: they moved, they fed children, and they improved lives.

🔬 Evidence and Research: Why GiveDirectly and Cash Transfers Are Backed by Data

One reason organizations like Canva chose to partner with GiveDirectly is because the cash transfer model has research behind it. Academics and development economists have studied unconditional cash transfers and found consistent results: increased consumption, improved health and education outcomes, and economic benefits without large negative side effects.

Key findings from the broader literature that align with what I saw include:

• Increased consumption: Households typically spend transfers on food and essentials, raising caloric intake and improving nutrition.
• Investment in assets: People often use part of transfers to buy assets — livestock, tools, or housing improvements — which can last and generate future returns.
• Education outcomes: Direct cash can increase school attendance by covering fees, uniforms, and supplies.
• Psychological benefits: Cash reduces stress and provides a sense of dignity and autonomy.
• Low leakage and low misuse: Empirical studies often show low levels of waste and little evidence that transfers are spent on luxury vices at scale.

Of course, context matters. The effectiveness of transfers depends on local markets, the amount and frequency of transfers, and complementary policies. But in many low-income contexts, unconditional cash has been one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce poverty and improve welfare.

🛠 Logistics on the Ground: Phones, Roadside Agents, and the Moment Money Arrives

I watched multiple distribution methods in action. In many villages, mobile money has become a lifeline. People get mobile alerts when a transfer arrives. I was at a village gathering when dozens of phones started lighting up. The chief had called everyone together, and when the alerts came in, the noise was deafening — laughter, crying, dancing.

In other places, we visited a roadside agent — a person tasked with disbursing cash for those who get their payments in cash rather than digitally. The agent sat behind a small table and handed out envelopes. In one instance, a woman named Dorothy received her funds and immediately walked to buy food for neighborhood children.

These distribution methods matter because they combine modern infrastructure with local trust. Mobile transfers are fast and reduce the risk of theft during distribution. Roadside agents can reach areas where mobile penetration is lower or where people prefer cash for cultural or logistical reasons.

🧭 The Two-Step Plan: Canva’s Model for Business and Doing Good

During my time in Malawi I spoke with Canva’s leadership about their philosophy. Melanie Perkins, Canva’s CEO, shared the company’s "two-step plan": build an extremely valuable company and use that success to do enormous good in the world. But she added an important nuance: doing both steps at the same time amplifies both.

"We have a two-step plan at Canva to build one of the world's most valuable companies and do the most good we can do. Originally, I thought we'd do step one and then step two. But I realised it was much more powerful to do them at the same time." — Melanie Perkins

That integrated approach allowed Canva to bring its entire community — employees, designers, and users — into the journey. When a company converts economic success into philanthropic impact at scale and with transparency, it changes the conversation about corporate giving. It becomes less of an afterthought and more a core purpose.

To the world, Canva has committed $100 million to expand the GiveDirectly partnership over four years. That commitment builds on the $50 million already given since 2021. These are not small sums. They represent a sustained attempt to test what happens when companies use their resources to power evidence-based interventions rather than purely traditional charity models.

🤝 Trust and Dignity: The Intangible But Essential Outcomes

I’ve reported on a lot of development programs over the years, but I don’t think any one metric captures what I observed better than the word dignity. The families I met did not just receive money: they were trusted to make the best decisions for themselves.

That trust produced dignity in two ways:

• Decision-making power: People regained control over household priorities — whether to buy food, pay school fees, or invest in a floor. Even small choices mattered.
• Visible self-determination: When recipients contributed to a clinic or chose where to spend, they became agents of change in their own communities rather than passive recipients of charity.

Melanie put it this way when reflecting on the experience: the dignity created by cash is hard to measure, but when you sit and feel it, there is a lesson in humility. Cash respects people. It starts from the assumption that people know what they need and that the role of donors is to remove constraints, not to prescribe lives.

📉 Common Objections and How I Saw Them Addressed

I’ve heard all the criticisms people level at unconditional cash transfers: that money will be wasted, that recipients will be reckless, that transfers will create dependency, or that they fuel inflation and market distortions.

On the ground in Malawi, several of those objections felt overstated:

• Waste and recklessness: The most common immediate spends were food, home repair, and school fees — basic, sensible uses. I saw little evidence of frivolous spending at scale.
• Dependency: A single transfer cannot create permanent dependency. Many recipients used it as a bridge or seed investment — to buy fertilizer, secure a roof, or pay school fees that build future human capital.
• Inflation concerns: In small, localized transfers, inflation is rarely a systemic problem. The effect is mainly localized and temporary. Cash also increases supply-side responses — merchants restock when demand rises.

That said, cash is not a panacea. Markets must supply goods and services for cash to be fully effective. Chronic structural problems — national infrastructure, health systems, or large-scale employment — require complementary policies. But when donors or companies want to improve household welfare quickly, unconditional cash transfers are often among the most effective tools available.

🌱 Long-Term Thinking: How Cash Helps Build Futures

One transfer can change the immediate horizon for a family, but the best outcomes happen when transfers are part of a larger, sustained approach.

Examples I observed:

• Education gains: Paying school fees today can raise earning potential tomorrow.
• Health investments: A floor reduces disease; a clinic improves access to care. These outcomes compound over time.
• Agricultural productivity: Buying fertilizer or seeds can increase yields and lead to better future income.
• Community infrastructure: Small contributions aggregating into a clinic is an example of one-time transfers building something durable.

Canva’s continued funding and GiveDirectly’s program design can combine one-off transfers with ongoing support and monitoring to ensure that gains are sustained and that communities move toward self-sufficiency rather than repeated dependency.

📣 Stories That Stayed With Me

There are hundreds of small, human stories from my time in Malawi. A few I cannot shake:

• Wonderful: A child named Wonderful whose name itself expressed hope and future orientation.
• Fortunate: A girl whose parents said she could attend school because of the cash transfer.
• Maria’s loss: A mother who lost a toddler to malaria and whose sentence about distance to care cut through the abstractions of policy debates. She said the nearest hospital was six miles away and only reachable on foot. When a clinic is built in the village, that distance and its consequences change.
• The village celebration: That moment when everyone’s phone buzzed and the air filled with music, cheering, and dancing. You could feel the psychological lift — collective and immediate.

These stories matter because they humanize data. You can read all the reports you want, but sitting with a mother who can now buy fertilizer or lay a cement floor — and watching her breathe easier — is the evidence that numbers cannot fully capture.

🔍 Accountability and Transparency: How the Program Tracks Impact

Accountability matters when millions of dollars move across borders to villages. GiveDirectly has a public, research-oriented approach. They partner with researchers and often run randomized controlled trials or other monitoring to see what works. Canva, as a corporate partner, has set up transparent commitments and public announcements about the scale of funding.

Key aspects of accountability I noticed or that are commonly used:

• Clear public commitments: Canva has publicly stated how much it has donated and pledged additional support — numbers that are easy to audit.
• Partnership with researchers: GiveDirectly frequently collaborates with academics to track outcomes.
• Digital records: Mobile transfers create a paper trail, reducing leakage and making distribution traceable.
• On-the-ground presence: Local staff and agents ensure distributions are handled transparently and that recipients can ask questions.

These steps don’t eliminate every risk — no humanitarian program can do that — but transparency and evidence-centered approaches make it more likely that money reaches intended recipients and has intended effects.

📌 Lessons for Companies, Donors, and Policymakers

What should corporations and donors learn from this model? There are several practical takeaways:

1. Scale thoughtfully: Big commitments (tens of millions) can drive research and demonstrate impact, but scaling must remain sensitive to context.
2. Center dignity: Trust people with resources rather than prescribing how they must live. Dignity itself is an outcome.
3. Partner with evidence-based implementers: Organizations like GiveDirectly bring operational expertise and connections to research communities.
4. Use business success for public good: Canva’s two-step plan shows how companies can commit resources in proportion to their success and do so strategically.
5. Complement transfers with public goods: Transfers are powerful, but public services — health, education, and markets — multiply the benefits.

🔮 What’s Next: Canva’s $100 Million Pledge and the Path Forward

Canva has committed $100 million over four years to expand its partnership with GiveDirectly. That commitment is not merely money; it’s an experiment and a moral statement. If it continues to show positive results — improved food security, higher school attendance, better health outcomes, and stronger community infrastructure — it will add momentum to a broader movement that rethinks how aid is delivered.

The path forward should include:

• Careful monitoring and evaluation to document what works, where, and why.
• Iterative design that adapts to local market conditions and recipient feedback.
• Complementary investments in health and education systems where they are weak.
• Policy engagement so that governments can scale proven interventions responsibly.

If more corporations treat philanthropy as an integrated part of their mission — like Canva’s two-step plan — the potential to scale evidence-backed interventions grows. The ambition that "everyone on this planet can have their basic human needs met" sounded audacious when Melanie first said it. After seeing people in Malawi, it feels like a plausible, moral imperative rather than a fantasy.

❓ FAQ: Common Questions About Cash Transfers, GiveDirectly, and Canva’s Work

How does GiveDirectly actually send money to people?

GiveDirectly uses digital payment systems where available (mobile money transfers) and partnered roadside agents or local cash disbursement mechanisms where needed. Mobile transfers create a verifiable record, are fast, and minimize security risks. In areas with limited mobile penetration, GiveDirectly uses field agents who meet recipients and distribute funds in person.

Is $550 enough to make a difference?

Context matters, but in many rural parts of Malawi $550 can cover immediate needs, pay school fees, buy agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, and fund home repairs like laying a cement floor. The impact of $550 differs by household size and local prices, but our reporting showed many families using that amount for a mix of short- and medium-term investments with tangible effects.

Won’t recipients waste the money?

Research and my observations suggest that recipients largely make pragmatic choices. Most of the money is spent on essentials: food, shelter, health, education, and productive investments. While there will always be individual variations, the broad pattern is one of sensible use.

Does cash create dependency?

Short-term transfers alleviate immediate needs and can seed investments that raise future incomes. Dependency is more commonly associated with poorly designed, perpetual handouts. Programs like GiveDirectly focus on empowering recipients to make productive choices; combined with broader economic opportunity, this reduces dependency risks.

How is the program monitored for corruption or leakage?

GiveDirectly uses digital records, public commitments, local staff, and partnerships with researchers to monitor disbursement and outcomes. Digital transfers reduce opportunities for funds to be siphoned off during distribution. Organizations also publish results and engage independent evaluators.

How does this affect local markets and inflation?

Localized transfers increase demand temporarily and can lead to positive market responses — merchants restock, traders bring in supply, and local employment can rise. Systemic inflation is unlikely from localized transfers unless transfers are massive and widespread without corresponding supply responses.

Can this model be scaled to bigger regions or countries?

Yes, with caveats. Scaling requires robust delivery systems, digital or physical distribution channels, and market capacity to absorb increased demand. It also needs political buy-in and integration with public services. Evidence suggests scaling is feasible, but it must be done thoughtfully with monitoring and evaluation.

How can people or companies support this model?

Organizations can partner with implementers like GiveDirectly, fund pilot programs in specific geographies, and commit to transparent, evidence-based giving. Individuals can donate to reputable organizations that practice unconditional cash transfers, advocate for policies that support cash-based assistance, and support research into scaling and complementary interventions.

What does the future look like for recipients?

The future depends on continued investments in livelihoods, education, and health systems. Cash transfers are a powerful tool for immediate improvement and can catalyze longer-term gains when combined with broader economic and social policies. For many recipients I met, the transfer was a hopeful pivot point — a chance to invest in their children’s schooling, in their homes, and in their businesses.

📚 Final Reflections: Dignity, Humility, and the Power of Trust

After spending time in Malawi, the most important conclusion I took away is not a statistic but a sentiment: when you trust people with resources, they often respond with responsibility and generosity. The dignity I observed is not easily measured, but it is visible in how people chose to spend money, in their willingness to pool resources for a clinic, and in the communal celebrations that followed each disbursement.

Canva’s $100 million pledge, layered on top of previous contributions, is an experiment in corporate-powered social impact. It does not have to be the only model of aid, but it offers a clear demonstration that companies can translate success into meaningful, evidence-backed interventions that respect the autonomy of recipients.

As a journalist, I came to Malawi to witness change. I left with renewed belief that one of the most powerful development tools is to give people the freedom to act. It’s simple, it’s human, and as I saw in village after village, it works — not perfectly, but meaningfully. If donors, corporations, and policymakers can scale this with care and humility, we might be closer to a world where basic human needs are met, where names like Wonderful and Fortunate are more than courage; they are promise.

For anyone who wants to learn more or get involved: look into GiveDirectly’s public reports, follow Canva’s philanthropic announcements, and support evidence-based organizations that center dignity and trust in their work. The people I met in Malawi were not asking for miracles. They were asking for the chance to decide their futures. When given that chance, they chose wisely.

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