One hundred dollars per child

Ten billion dollars every year would give you one hundred dollars to spend on each of the poorest 75% of children born that year. Two groups, OLPC and FAB have good ideas about what to do with that hundred dollars per child. But I got to thinking, if you had one hundred dollars to spend on every child would giving them a laptop or opening a bank account that they couldn’t touch until 16 really be the best uses of that money?

There are many charities that will let you give a goat or some other useful animal to a needy family for less than one hundred dollars. That much money will also buy a lot of rice. There are lots of categories where that much money can do significant good. Health, education, economic development for the family and nutrition all present many challenges that can be solved incrementally with small lumps of money like this.

It’s an interesting thought exercise that keeps sending me round and round so I thought I’d pass it along to you all. If you were a kid with not much, what would add the most smiles to your life?