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After interviewing thousands of poor farmers
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in countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, China, México, and Zambia
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I’ve learned that practical solutions to extreme poverty
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can only come from listening to poor people themselves
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not from the army of poverty experts in the world.
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I’ve developed 12 practical steps for problem solving
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that have helped 17 million people move out of poverty
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and into the middle class forever.
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These 12 steps apply equally well to finding practical solutions
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to the big social problems you may be working on.
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I’ve described these 12 steps in my book, Out of Poverty.
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For the last five years I’ve been working on a book
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and I’ve finally finished it.
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It took me five years to write a measly 200 pages.
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The book is called Out of Poverty:
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What works when traditional approaches fail.
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I really wrote the book to create a revolution
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in how we think about poverty and what we do about it.
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It won’t create the revolution by itself but I hope it helps.
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For the past 25 years two questions have plagued my curiosity.
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What makes poor people poor?
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And what can they do about it?
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Because of these two infernal questions,
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I’ve had long conversations with thousands of one acre farmers in developing countries.
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What I learned made it possible for IDE,
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the development organization I started 25 years ago,
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to help 17 million $1-a-day people move out of poverty forever.
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The first three steps to practical problem solving are
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probably the most obvious, the most simple, and the least frequently followed.
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The first is go to where the action is.
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You can’t sit in your office at the World Bank
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and figure out how to solve the problem of poverty in Myanmar.
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Step 2, talk to the people who have the problem
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and listen to what they have to say.
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In the 1990s, agriculture experts in Bangladesh were dismayed
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at the tiny amounts of fertilizer small farmers in Bangladesh were applying to their monsoon rice crops.
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They set up intensive farmer education programs but nothing worked.
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Finally, somebody asked a couple of farmers why they use so little fertilizer.
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“That’s easy,” they said.
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“Every year 10 years or so we have a major flood that wipes out everything we plant. ..."
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"... So we only use as much fertilizer as we can afford to lose in a 10 year flood.”
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All of a sudden these farmers were transformed from ignorant, superstitious peasants,
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to people who could teach the agricultural experts a thing or two.
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Step 3, learn everything there is to know about the problem’s specific context.
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The specific context of 800 million
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of the 1.2 billion people in the world who live on less than $2 a day,
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is a tiny farm with poor soils, and no irrigation.
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These farms are typically one acre,
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and split into 4 or 5 separate scattered plots.
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So here’s the fourth point,
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if you come up with a solution to a problem there is no reason to be modest.
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Some of the biggest problems in the world really require big solutions,
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which are really small solutions applied thousands and thousands of times.
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Step 5, think like a child.
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It’s a little bit ironic that thinking big and thinking like a child go together, but they do.
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You have to think like a child to find the obvious solution to a big problem that people have missed.
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Step 6, see and do the obvious.
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If we can’t see our blind spots how can we see and do the obvious?
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Immersing yourself in the problem helps.
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Step 7, if somebody already invented it you don’t have to.
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It’s easy these days to look for solutions that other people may have already come up with.
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Step 8, make sure your approach has positive measurable impacts that can be brought to scale.
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Step 9, design to specific price targets.
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Affordability rules the design process for poor customers.
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Number 10, follow practical 3 year plans.
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No matter how powerful and world changing your vision for the future is,
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unless you can translate it into an effective work plan for the first three years,
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you’ll never get there.
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Step 11, continue to learn from your customers.
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When I started IDE I decided I would interview at least 100 customers a year
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and I’ve done that.
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At this point I’ve interviewed more than 3000 poor farm families,
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and walked around with them through their farms.
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When they told me that they’ve invested
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their new income from a treadle pump
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in the education of their kids,
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we designed a $12 solar lantern
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so their kids could read at night.
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When they said they invested
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some of their money from a drip system
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in a milk buffalo or in some goats,
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we learned everything there was to learn about small livestock
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and started helping farmers with small livestock operations.
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Number 12, don’t be distracted by what other people say.
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Just about everything that I have worked on
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that has turned out to be a smashing success,
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I’ve heard many people tell me that I was wasting my time.
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One and a half million treadle pumps later,
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we have 750 thousand acres newly under irrigation.
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If I had listened to people who told me it was a waste of time,
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we never have gotten there.
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If you’re willing to go out on a limb,
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visit the people who have the problem, in their real life setting
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and listen to what they have to say,
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and most importantly,
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have a keen interest in learning new things,
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then this approach is for you.
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If you and your group decide the best thing you can do is donate money,
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make sure you pick organizations that have measurable impacts,
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like poverty organizations that increase the income
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of people who live on less than a dollar a day.
