| Description |
xi, 232 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Series |
A BK currents book |
|
BK currents book.
|
| Contents |
Introduction: learning to do the simple and obvious -- Twelve steps to practical problem solving -- The three great poverty eradication myths -- It all starts with making more money -- Design for the other 90 percent -- From subsistence to new income -- Affordable small-plot irrigation -- A new agriculture for one-acre farms -- Creating vibrant new markets that serve poor customers -- Slums : the incubator for new income opportunities -- Poverty and the planet -- Taking action to end poverty -- Bahadur and his family move out of poverty |
| Summary |
"Drawing on his twenty-five years of experience, Paul Polak explodes what he calls the "Three Great Poverty Eradication Myths": that donations alone will end 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 some areas where these approaches have been tried, such as sub-Saharan Africa, poverty rates have actually gone up." "These failed top-down efforts contrast sharply with the grassroots approach Polak and International Development Enterprises 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 impoverished rural farmers use the market to improve their lives." |
|
"Throughout the book, Polak tells stories about the people he and IDE have helped, especially Krishna Bahadur Thapa, a Nepali farmer who went from barely surviving to earning $4,800 a year - solidly upper middle class by local standards. Out of Poverty offers a new and promising way to end world poverty, one that honors the entrepreneurial spirit of the poor themselves."--BOOK JACKET |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-217) and index |
| Subject |
International Development Enterprises (India)
|
|
Poverty.
|
| LC no. |
2007041387 |
| ISBN |
9781576754498 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
|
1576754499 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
|
