New Approach to an Old Issue

Published February 06, 2009 @ 05:28AM PT

Some people look at the world, and become overwhelmed by the prevalence of poverty. Helping one billion people, they decide, is just too large and complicated to tackle. Paul Polak looks at the world and sees the one billion people who want to help themselves. They just require the opportunity and support to do so.

As the founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE) and author of a new book, Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail, Mr. Polak champions a new approach to solving domestic and global issues of poverty:

Founded by Polak in 1981, IDE [International Development Enterprises] is based on the belief that there are simple solutions to the seemingly complex problem of poverty, and that those solutions are based on enabling the entrepreneurial spirit of the poor. The logic of IDE's approach is so simple it seems ridiculously obvious: Poor people are poor because they don't have enough money; 800 million of the world's poorest earn their living from one-acre farms; those people could earn more if they knew how to grow high-value crops; to do that, the poor need access to very cheap tools-seeds, fertilizer, irrigation-and to markets where they can sell their goods.

In the short video below, Mr. Polak talks about the time he spent with a homeless man on the streets of Denver and some of the ideas he developed for helping homeless people make money as a result of his experience.

Interesting stuff, no? But is this type of social entrepreneurial approach feasible for ending homelessness on a large scale in the United States?

Photo: From Smithsonian, August 2008 issue.

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Author

Shannon has worked in homeless shelters and service organizations in San Francisco, the Triangle region of North Carolina, and currently in the greater Boston area. She is a graduate student studying housing and urban policy at Tufts University.