HEADLINES OF THE DAY: ANOTHER 15,000 PEOPLE DIED YESTERDAY BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO POOR TO LIVE. THE RICH INCREASED THEIR WEALTH YESTERDAY BY $0.3 BILLION. THE 21st CENTURY VERSION OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IS ONE DAY NEARER.
“O Ye rich ones on earth! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease.”
Bahá’u’lláh
A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis at willisdavid167@gmail.com. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE TO POVERTY (Part 76). This blog is a review of ENDING GLOBAL POVERTY: A GUIDE TO WHAT WORKS by Stephen C. Smith, published in 2005.
The traps that keep people mired in poverty
Over 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger, and over 10 million children die each year from preventable causes. Global poverty is something that we can and should solve within our lifetimes. Ending Global Poverty explores the various traps that keep people mired in poverty – traps like poor nutrition, illiteracy, and lack of access to health care – and presents eight keys to escaping these traps. Smith gives readers the tools they need to determine which approaches are most effective in fighting, and eventually overcoming, poverty.
Practical advice about how to make a difference
Grassroots programs and organizations are helping people gain the capabilities they need to escape from poverty, and this book highlights many of the most promising of these strategies in some of the poorest countries in the world, explaining what they do and what makes them effective. Ending Global Poverty shows that although the task is daunting, it isn’t necessary to be rich or powerful to help pull people out of extreme poverty. This book is a vital resource for anyone who wants practical advice about how to make a difference now.
Devised on the ground by people from the developing world
Although it may look bleak, there is real hope. In fact, hundreds of millions of people have already broken free from poverty, gaining the assets and capabilities to sustainably support themselves and their families in decent living conditions. There have been real breakthroughs in understanding the causes of poverty traps and in designing and implementing grassroots programs that reliably provide the means of escape. Many of the best plans for breaking out of poverty traps have been devised on the ground by people from the developing world, but with much-needed assistance from outside.
8 keys that were particularly important
I identified 8 keys that were particularly important: There are on the order of 1 million programs around the world attempting to reduce poverty. I had to develop a method of selecting some of the most effective, innovative, and promising programs from among this large pool. I used 3 main screens: highly rigorous evidence of program impact; the winning of major juried prizes and citations for development effectiveness and innovation; and citations of program evaluators of highly regarded private voluntary organizations.
Introduction
Global poverty is the scourge and disgrace of our affluent era. But we can effectively end extreme poverty as we know it in our times. The starting point is the awareness of these basic facts: The dimensions of extreme poverty are enormous, but an equal amount of progress has already been made. And although an end to global poverty is not inevitable, with redoubled commitment, we can end extreme poverty in one generation. We have only to follow through and adequately fund strategies that are already working, while continuously and carefully evaluating both new and old strategies and learning from their lessons.
20 countries are poorer today than they were a generation ago
According to the World Bank, about 1.25 billion people subsist on less that $1 per day, and some 2.8 billion – nearly half the world’s population – live on less than $2 per day. The average real income gap between the richest billion and the poorest 2½ billion has widened to more than 16 to 1. The real income of the average American is more than 50 times that of the average person in Sub-Saharan Africa. About 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are poorer today than they were a generation ago.