March 20, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail
by Paul Polak
“There can be no question that the most direct and cost-effective first step out of poverty is to find ways to help poor people to increase their income,” argues Paul Polak, founder of International Development Enterprises, a group that helps poor entrepreneurs. “This allows them to make their own choices about which root causes of poverty to address.”
Mr. Polak writes of his own work with some of the hundreds of millions of farmers who work tiny, one-acre plots of land and live on less than $1 a day. He believes that discovering “ways to unleash market forces” is the first step organizations and governments should take when working to eradicate extreme poverty, and that charity alone is not enough to lift the world’s poorest families from indigence.
He lays out his own guiding principles for antipoverty work; for example, Mr. Polak exhorts aid officials and workers to talk directly with poor people to get a firsthand understanding of their experiences.
“To move out of poverty, poor people have to invest their own time and money,” he says. “The path out of poverty lies in releasing the energy of third-world entrepreneurs.”
The book also explores affordable design for poor farmers, such as treadle pumps and drip irrigation, and how to create markets for poor vendors and customers. Mr. Polak writes about the role of multinational corporations, engineers, universities, and other groups.
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, Calif. 94104; (415) 288-0260; fax (415) 362-2512; http://www.bkconnection.com; 232 pages; $27.95; ISBN 978-1-57675-449-8.
