List Price

$20.95

Textbook Details

  • ISBN:
    1605092762
  • ISBN-13:
    9781605092768
  • PUB. DATE:
    September 2009
  • PUBLISHER:
    Berrett-Koehler Publ Inc

Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail by Paul Polak

$20.95 List Price
  • Overview
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Customer Reviews

Poor people are poor because they don't have enough moneyby sleepless

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Very helpful book from a dedicated practitioner to reducing $1/day rural poverty in developing countries.

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Poor people are poor because they don't have enough money

Kind of obvious . it's what the poor tell you when you ask them . but Polak argues that the "poverty experts" have much more complicated answers which is why they are so often distracted from actually...

Fighting poverty with practical compassionby RolfDobelli

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Free-market advocate Paul Polak is an atypical poverty expert. He compellingly argues that handouts do not alleviate poverty and might make it worse. Instead, he insists, the true solution to poverty lies in unleashing the poor?s entrepreneurial power. Polak says successful entrepreneurs like him are the ones who can help the poor make more money. His company designs cheap water pumps and irrigation...

Hopeful ideas on how to effectivley end povertyby Anonymous

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I just finished this wonderful book, and feel inspired to start my own small scale project in my own neighborhood in a way I know can really help. This book really shows how any of us can help make a difference.

Overview -

Out of Poverty

Product Details

  • Pub. Date: September 2009
  • Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publ Inc
  • Sales Rank: 236,037

Synopsis

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.

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Biography

Polak is the founder of the Colorado-based non-profit International Development Enterprises (IDE). His newest project is D-Rev, a non-profit that seeks "to create a design revolution by enlisting the best designers in the world to develop products and ideas that will benefit the 90% of the people on earth who are poor...."