BOOK REVIEW: Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail

Paul Polak’s passion is to put an end to global poverty, and he has a unique and highly effective means for doing so: he goes to the poor and asks what they most need. Polak brings 25 years of experience with him to the task; he is the founder of International Development Enterprises, which was granted $13.4 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2007 for helping farmers in Asia and Africa.
Polak asserts that “people are capable of moving out of poverty in a few months,” but this cannot happen by throwing money at them from a distance. He stresses the importance of first understanding the cultural context of the problem; improvements — such as boiling water — that may seem insignificant to those who run the world’s major poverty eradication programs can be the simple key to transforming the life of a poor small-scale farmer and his family for generations.
To effect change while respecting the knowledge and dignity of those being helped is true success, and Polak’s “trickle-up” method empowers the poor to create hope for themselves and their children; hope that leads to flourishing and stable social structures.