Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail (BK Currents (Hardcover))
by Paul Polak
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Book Summary Information
Author: Paul PolakEdition: Hardcover
Format: Illustrated
Published: 2008-02-01
ISBN: 1576754499
Number of pages: 232
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Book Reviews of Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail (BK Currents (Hardcover))
Book Review: A fresh look at dollar-a-day poverty
Summary: 5 Stars
This book summarizes Mr. Polak's work with his company, IDE (International Development Enterprises), which focuses on creating affordable, useful products that can assist small-plot farmers in developing countries to increase their income. Throughout, he presents salient and frankly obvious points about the very poor and their needs that most aid organizations either ignore or just never thought to address. For instance, from his introduction: "The biggest reason most poor people are poor is because they don't have enough money." See? Obvious.
The point is, however, most aid organizations don't address this root problem, choosing instead to go for big, showy projects that cost a lot and sound really ambitious, but just don't do anything to benefit the average very poor family. Polak suggests a twelve point plan to create programs that can really benefit the very poor. These include things like talking to people with the problem you are interested in, and really listening to what they have to say about it; learning everything possible about the problem's specific context; thinking in terms of scalability; developing measurable outcomes; and designing to specific cost and price targets.
The book tells the story of how one family in Bangladesh was able to move from barely surviving on less than $1 a day and not having enough food to make it through the year to relative prosperity and a much more comfortable lifestyle. This was made possible in part by their access to affordable, small-scale irrigation equipment, allowing them to make more effective use of their other resources - their land and their physical labor. Polak points out that when families can earn more money, they almost automatically do things like improve their diets, further their education, seek better healthcare, and generally become more empowered to improve their lives in the ways they see fit, according to their own priorities.
It took some mental acrobatics for me to begin to accept the concept of dollar a day farmers as "consumers" rather than "aid recipients." But as a market this group has a huge, untapped potential. There are something like 800 million small farmers; the combined purchasing power (given the right products and a little access to credit) would be enormous. Overall, I found this book engaging and its message hopeful and practical. It certainly provides food for thought.
Summary of Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail (BK Currents (Hardcover))
Based on his 25 years of experience, Polak explodes what he calls the "Three Great Poverty Eradication Myths": that we can donate people out of poverty, that national economic growth will end poverty, and that Big Business, operating as it does now, will end poverty. Polak shows that programs based on these ideas have utterly failed--in fact, in sub-Saharan Africa poverty rates have actually gone up.These failed top-down efforts contrast sharply with the grassroots approach Polak and IDE have championed: helping the dollar-a-day poor earn more money through their own efforts. Amazingly enough, unexploited market opportunities do exist for the desperately poor. Polak describes how he and others have identified these opportunities and have developed innovative, low-cost tools that have helped in lifting 17 million people out of poverty.
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