Out of Poverty
- From: Chim <ChimS1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:14:57 -0800 (PST)
Prescriptions for helping poor people help themselves
By Alice Rawsthorn
Monday, February 25, 2008
LONDON: He had two wives, three children and two acres of land
scattered in the hills of Nepal. One acre produced maize, pulses and
monsoon vegetables to feed them, and the other monsoon rice. In good
years they made $100 by selling surplus rice, but in bad ones they ran
out of food before the monsoon harvest. Like 800 million other people
in the world, Krishna Bahadur Thapa and his family had less than $1 a
day to live on. How could they escape from poverty?
That was in 2001, and their fortunes have since been transformed.
Installing a cheap irrigation system enabled them to grow cash crops,
like cucumbers and cauliflowers. They could then afford to buy
fertilizer, better seeds, livestock and, eventually, more land to grow
oranges. Both of Bahadur's wives are illiterate, but his grandchildren
can stay on at school for as long as they wish. Their expectations of
life are very different from their grandfather's thanks to his hard
work, and someone else's design ingenuity.
The story of the Bahadur family is told in "Out of Poverty," a book by
the American inventor and entrepreneur Paul Polak. As founder of the
nonprofit organization International Development Enterprises, Polak
has spent the last 25 years helping people, particularly poor farmers
in developing countries, to move out of poverty. He describes his
experiences and the lessons learned in his book, as well as
prescribing his formula for ending poverty, which boils down to
helping poor people to help themselves, with design playing an
important supporting role in their self-improvement. Polak comes
across as opinionated and occasionally cranky, as you would expect
from a man who describes himself as "a troublemaker"; but he is also
knowledgeable, pragmatic and determined to improve the lives of
millions of poor farmers.
He has no patience with conventional approaches to development, and
the book is peppered with examples of incompetence. There was the man
who managed five health clinics in Somalian refugee camps, but hadn't
visited them, and the American fund-raiser for an organization
supporting poor farmers who'd never been to the farms. Subsidies are
dismissed as the preserve of "development leaders who look for photo
opportunities with the poor but have little concern about producing
measurable results." Donations are given short shrift too. Polak tells
the cautionary tale of hand pumps being donated to villages in
developing countries, only to break down because no one assumed
responsibility for them. He is similarly scathing about the prospects
of the corporate sector helping to alleviate poverty by investing in
developing economies, arguing that Western businesses are equipped to
market to the middle classes living on $4 a day, but not the poor
surviving on $1 or less.
Instead he puts his faith in self-help. "The path out of poverty lies
in releasing the energy of Third World entrepreneurs," wrote Polak.
"The good news is that the small acreage farmers who make up the
majority of dollar-a-day people are already entrepreneurs, and they
are surrounded by thousands of other small-scale entrepreneurs
operating workshops, stores and repair shops."
But his brand of self-help also depends on the assistance of
designers. IDE has already steered millions of poor farmers on the
path to self-improvement by talking to them about what they need
(Polak is a firm believer in chatting over a cup of tea as the
precursor to any investment decision) and offering basic advice on how
to increase their income. It then sells them the necessary equipment
or, more specifically, the inexpensive versions of that kit, which it
has developed.
One of the biggest problems for poor farmers in hot countries is
water: finding it, storing it, and distributing it to their crops.
Doing all of this by hand is a long, arduous process, but commercial
irrigation systems are unaffordable for small farmers, not least
because they tend to have been designed and made for far larger farms.
IDE tackled this by providing micro-irrigation equipment at the right
price. It has supplied $8 bamboo treadle pumps, designed by a
Norwegian engineer, Gunnar Barnes, to more than two million farmers in
Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Nepal and Zambia, who have since
increased their income. When the operator presses down on bamboo
treadles, water is pumped out of the ground, even in the dry season.
IDE has also developed an affordable version of a drip irrigation
system, originally designed in Israel, to water plants. It was this
that transformed Bahadur's land.
Polak proudly relates how IDE rejects Western design hang-ups about
striving for originality and controlling the development process. "If
somebody has already invented it, you don't need to do so again," he
preaches. That's why IDE helped Barnes to distribute his design of the
treadle pump, and adapted the Israeli drip irrigation system rather
than inventing its own. It also encouraged other development
organizations to adapt the treadle pump for use in Kenya, Tanzania and
Niger. And it collaborated with refugee blacksmiths in Somalia to make
modern versions of traditional donkey carts to haul half a ton of wood
or water on rough dirt tracks. Refugees bought the carts on credit for
$450 each, and earned up to $200 a month from them.
IDE was recently awarded a $27 million grant from the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation to expand its micro-irrigation work in India, and
Polak has started a new organization, D-Rev (short for Design
Revolution), to encourage Western designers to address the needs of
the "other 90 percent" of the world's population who don't have access
to basic products and services.
He has a wishlist of urgently needed products for designers to
develop, and has secured funding from the Gates Foundation to start
work on some of them. The list includes a $100 micro-diesel water pump
for use on one-acre farms and a $15 scythe made from light, strong
fiberglass. Once the Design Revolutionaries have cracked those
problems, Polak is convinced that there is a receptive market in the
developing world for $2 eyeglasses and $10 solar lanterns for homes
without electricity, too.
.
- Prev by Date: Re: Funcinpec has history, sacrifice and relationship
- Next by Date: Re: Funcinpec has history, sacrifice and relationship
- Previous by thread: Dispatch: Our woman in Cambodia
- Next by thread: Spain's Queen Sofia tries her hand at pumping water at Wat Run village in Banthey Srey district, Siem Reap province
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
|
