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