[permaculture] Out of Poverty: Design for the Other 90% ?

Jim ashevillecurrencyproject at gmail.com
Wed Feb 13 13:29:44 EST 2008


    Hi-
    Has anyone heard about this book, one way or the other, by this
    Sebastapol-based author? I find this quote intriguing:
    "I believe that nothing less than revolutions in water, agriculture,
    markets, and design are needed. All four are doable and practical,
    and I'm committed to making them happen before I die. "

    If you respond to this post, please consider snipping out the part
    below. I think it's perfectly fine to post long things on this list,
    but when folks have to scroll through long responses that include
    the long original, it gets to be a bit of scrolling work.
    -- Jim Barton
    PO Box 6821
    West Asheville, NC  28816
    (828)  318-7418 


            *March 5 - * /Out of Poverty: Design for the Other 90%/ A
            presentation and discussion with Paul Polak. Old Main
            Chapel, 6:00pm.

            In a hard-hitting new book, Paul Polak tells why traditional
            poverty eradication programs have fallen so short, and how
            he and his organization developed an alternative approach
            that has succeeded in lifting 17 million people out of
            poverty. Polak's and IDE's achievements have been recognized
            the Scientific American Top Fifty award for agriculture
            policy (2003), the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year
            award (2004), and the Tech Museum award for the design of
            IDE's low-cost drip irrigation system (2004). Articles about
            IDE and Polak have appeared in National Geographic, Harpers,
            Forbes, and Scientific American. Polak gives frequent talks
            and presentations at leading universities, as well as
            academic and professional conferences like the 2006
            International Symposium on Groundwater Sustainability
            (ISGWAS), the Annual Meeting of the National Collegiate
            Innovators and Inventors Association (NCIIA), the 2006 Aspen
            Design Summit, and the 2007 Pop!Tech Conference. To learn
            more about Paul and his work at IDE, please visit
            http://www.ide-international.org.

        *http://www.amazon.com/Out-Poverty-Traditional-Approaches-Currents/dp/1576754499/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202926684&sr=8-1
        <http://www.amazon.com/Out-Poverty-Traditional-Approaches-Currents/dp/1576754499/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202926684&sr=8-1>
        Book Description*
        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.

        *From the Publisher*
        *Preface*

        My fifteen-month-old grandson, Ethan, has fallen in love with a
        neighbor's driveway. It sits two houses down from where he lives
        in Sebastopol, California, and it seems to overflow with small,
        multi - colored stones. He stops there when I take him for a
        walk, and then he refuses to leave. He picks up a handful of
        stones and inspects each one carefully. He places them one after
        another in my hand, watching intently, and I give them back to
        him one by one until his hand is full again. I don't know who
        has given him the job of turning every little stone over and
        over in his hand until he understands its very essence, but
        that's the job he has accepted, and he's not leaving until it's
        done. He plops down on his butt and cuffs the stones into a
        pile, looks at me, and knocks it down and giggles. He can keep
        this up for hours, and if I pick him up to take him home, he
        cries. His playful curiosity is infectious, and I think I must
        have inherited a lot of genes from Ethan, because I operate just
        as he does. I live to play and to satisfy my curiosity.

        For the past twenty-five years, two questions have kept my
        curiosity aroused: What makes poor people poor? And what can
        they do about their poverty?

        Because of these infernal questions, I've dozed off during
        hundreds of long jeep rides with good companions over dusty,
        potholed roads. I've had thousands of conversations with
        one-acre farmers with dirt on their hands. We've walked along
        their patches of ten-foot-high black pepper vines in the central
        hills of Vietnam beside jungle permanently scarred by Agent
        Orange. We've strolled together through their scattered
        quarter-acre plots in the drab brown winter plains of the
        Gangetic delta in Uttar Pradesh, and they have offered me more
        cups of steaming tea than my seventy-three-year-old kidneys can
        take. I love discovering new things from people nobody else ever
        seems to listen to, and I love talking them into trying out some
        of the crazy ideas that we come up with together. I have learned
        more from talking with these poor farmers than from any other
        thing I have done in my life.

        This book will tell their story and describe some of the things
        these people have taught me. It will tell the story of Krishna
        Bahadur Thapa and his family, and of how they moved from barely
        surviving on less than a dollar a day to earning forty-eight
        hundred dollars a year from their two-acre farm in the hills of
        Nepal. I tell many stories like Baha - dur's in this book, and I
        hope that each one of them satisfies another small bit of your
        curiosity about how people who are extremely poor live their
        lives and dream their dreams. Best of all, what I learned from
        these people has been put to work in straightforward strategies
        that millions of other poor people have used to end their
        poverty forever.

        Each of the practical solutions to poverty I describe is obvious
        and direct. For example, since 800 million of the people whose
        families survive on less than a dollar a day earn their living
        from small farms, why not start by looking for ways they can
        make more money from farming? And since these farmers work for
        less than a dollar a day, why not look for ways they can take
        advantage of their remarkably low labor rates by growing
        high-value, labor-intensive cash crops and selling them at the
        time of year when these crops will fetch the highest prices? If
        it is true that common sense is not really common, and that
        seeing and doing the obvious are even less so, then some of the
        conclusions I draw from my conversations with poor people will
        surprise you: they certainly fly in the face of conventional
        theory and practice in the development field.

        I hate books about poverty that make you feel guilty, as well as
        dry, academic ones that put you to sleep. Working to alleviate
        poverty is a lively, exciting field capable of generating new
        hope and inspiration, not feelings of gloom and doom. Learning
        the truth about poverty generates disruptive innovations capable
        of enriching the lives of rich people even more than those of
        poor people.

        The first section of the book explains how I became curious
        about poverty, describes the process I learned for finding
        creative solutions to just about any major social problem, and
        challenges the three great poverty eradication myths that have
        inhibited doing the obvious to end poverty.

        The next section, Chapters 3 to 8, describes what many
        small-acreage farmers have taught me, a practical approach
        capable of ending the poverty of some 800 million of the world's
        dollar-a-day people. For poor people themselves, there is little
        doubt that the single most important step they can take to move
        out of poverty is to learn how to make more money. The way to do
        it is through grassroots enterprises --just about all of the
        poor are already tough, stubborn, survival entrepreneurs--and
        they have to find ways to make their enterprises more
        profitable. For small-farm enterprises, the path to new wealth
        lies in growing market-centered, high-value, labor-intensive
        cash crops. To accomplish this, poor farmers need access to
        affordable irrigation, a new generation of farming methods and
        inputs customized to fit tiny farms, the creation of vibrant new
        markets that bring them the seeds and fertilizers they need, and
        open access to markets where small acreage farmers can sell
        their products at a profit. This range of new products and
        services for poor customers can only be created by a revolution
        in current design practice, based on the ruthless pursuit of
        affordability. Chapter 9 describes how the principles discussed
        in the earlier chapters can be applied to helping poor people
        living in urban slums and on the sidewalks of cities in
        developing countries.

        In the wrap-up section, Chapter 10 describes the central role
        poverty plays in most of the problems facing planet Earth;
        Chapter 11 describes what donors, governments, universities,
        research institutions, and the rest of us can do to end poverty;
        and Chapter 12 tells how Bahadur and his family finally moved
        out of poverty.

        My hope is that you will come away from reading this book
        energized and inspired. There is much to be done.
        **********************************************
        *How do we change how the world thinks and acts about
        dollar-a-day poverty?*,

        January 30, 2008
        By  	Karin Hibma
        <http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2ZSIAOVRG9H1T/ref=cm_cr_dp_pdp>
        - See all my reviews
        <http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2ZSIAOVRG9H1T/ref=cm_cr_dp_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview>
        (REAL NAME)
        <http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=cm_rn_bdg_help?ie=UTF8&nodeId=14279681&pop-up=1#RN>
          

        In July 2005, we met Dr. Paul Polak at the first Aspen
        Leadership Summit and began to understand his insights and work
        of twenty-five years. He described "The Four Revolutions Needed
        to End Poverty" in a way that inspired us as designers and
        problem-solvers:

        "I believe that nothing less than revolutions in water,
        agriculture, markets, and design are needed. All four are doable
        and practical, and I'm committed to making them happen before I
        die.

        How do we change how the world thinks and acts about
        dollar-a-day poverty? I want to make three things happen:

        Change the way design is taught in the west.

        Change the way design is taught in developing countries.

        Create a platform for 10,000 of the world's best designers to
        address the practical problems of the other 90% of the world's
        customers."

        This delightful book is the beginning of finding ways for
        everyone to jump in as major players, in a way that fits with
        their dreams. It's an education, an insightful and inspiring
        process and a great opportunity for us all.





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