Paul Polak founded IDE, International Development Enterprises, as a non-profit dedicated to eradicating poverty twenty-five years ago. Yet unlike many similar organizations, it tries to accomplish its goal through a very different approach to helping lift people out of poverty. There are over one billion people in the world who live on $1 a day, many of whom are farmers, growing commodity crops like rice for their own consumption. Polak argues that the only sustainable way to improve their lives is to nurture their inherent entrepreneurial spirit and allow them to make and sell high value products or offer services from which the income can be invested allowing an individual or families to prosper on an ongoing basis.
Polak cites three poverty eradication myths that he believes perpetuate the problem.
- Donations will help end poverty. Polak feels that simply giving money to people will not solve the problem on a long-term basis. The idea of “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life,” illustrates this well.
- Big business will end poverty. This is not the case because big business does not see the “$1...
