This paper will examine the attitudes of progressive educators toward poverty in developing countries. The reformers who formed the New Education Fellowship (NEF) in 1921 will be the subjects. They expanded their thinking from concerns about student freedom to efforts to encourage social reform, and by 1946 they participated in the creation of UNESCO. The NEF and UNESCO built on the faith that an appropriate education would reduce the causes of international war. This faith in education may have reinforced two related problems. Because an aspect of the faith in education was the belief that people would cooperate to serve the common good, the leaders of the conferences and planning sessions did not seek agreement on specific programmes. This was the first problem and it led to a second problem when the participants agreed that the programmes should adopt flexible methods to achieve a wide range of goals. The goals of the programmes expanded beyond the capacities of the agencies because there was no limit to the visions. (Contains 53 footnotes.)