Sustainable Poverty Alleviation Solutions
SusPAS: Sustainable Poverty Alleviation Solutions
Poverty is characterized by the lack of basic human needs, typically the lack of clean water for drinking and cooking, the lack of food, and a lack of suitable housing (shelter) to protect people from the cold as well as provide security to their property. In these communities, sanitation conditions are also poor, leading to rapid spread of infections causing ill health. To make matters worse, poor people face poor access to health care, as well as poor access to education.
A Global Effort: Poverty Alleviation is a Millennium Development Goal (Number 1). It is closely related to all of the other 7 goals. It is however, now clear that many countries will fail to achieve their target of reducing poverty by 2015.
Poverty in developing countries: Developing countries, especially those in Africa and Asia, including China and India, carry the largest burden of poverty. In those countries, a lack of sustainable development has resulted in wasteful spending of donor funds. Some of these countries, particularly in Africa, are blessed with vast deposits of wealth creating natural resources that easily dwarf those of the rich donor countries! With the goal of achieving sustainable living remaining unachieved, the poor fail to become self reliant and never achieve economic independence.
Poverty in the developed countries: There is poverty in developed countries too. The USA, UK, and Australia are some of the places where this is quite evident, particularly in inner cities.
Fighting world hunger and poverty
In many societies, hunger typifies poverty. The fight against hunger has raged for decades, yet the end remains out of sight. Poor people continue to find themselves totally dependent on food handouts, despite billions of dollars having been pumped into efforts to help them. While it is right to fight hunger, perhaps, the way the fight has been conducted so far has not been the best. Sustainable solutions, equipping poor families with the means to produce enough food to feed themselves, and sell any excess to others, have to be the way. A wise saying goes: ‘Give a man a fish – feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’.
A possible reason for failures: Poor access to information
Perhaps part of the reason for not being able to teach a man to fish, has been the information gap. Poor people have poor access to the rest of the world, and hence, may not be aware of solutions developed elsewhere to solve similar problems. In the end, local innovative solutions remain local and underutilised. Surely, the internet should help cover this gap.
The SuSPAS project: Designed to help fight world hunger and poverty
The SusPAS project aims to;
- Use the power of the internet to search for poverty alleviating ideas and solutions that appear to be sustainable
- Create a database of these solutions and draw attention to their existence in order to help promote uptake
- Evaluate some of the more promising ideas, and provide feedback
- Develop demo centres for villagers and village heads to visit and see some of these solutions at work, in order to encourage uptake. This will be developed along a “dream village” concept, where a set of solutions designed to make a village self sufficient are developed together (in one place).
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wat is it that has to be done 2 alleviate poverty in third world countries. Give examples of entreprenuership programmes that may be initiated to reduce the numbers of those affected
We think SusPAS villages could be the answer. Ideally, these should be evaluated before being fully recommended for implementation. Will uptade once we have info on some planned demo villages.
Thanks
SusPAS Editorial Team
I will give you some ideas
1) Agricultural processing center, this is a government and private sector partnership.
Government will provide the land and the people provide the materials.
METHODOLOGY
Perishable foods like fish, tomatoes etc can be dried or smoked at cheap rates or for free.
RESULTS
This will reduce price of food since production will increase.
This will Increase food production because farmers will not loose their produce if they a dried.
This will increase employment because more services and labor is involved in the value chain.
2) Agriculture Investment fund.
This is where the rich and middle class invest fund for agricultural development.
METHODOLOGY
An amount say $600 or multiplies of it, is invested by the public, fixed for a year, and every six months dividend of say 21.5% is given to the investor.
RESULTS
This will create a pool of fund for agricultural use
This will force the people to setup agro-industrial plants
This will increase employment and thus eradicate poverty.
This will solute the problem of raising funds for clearing land and startups.
3) Education
Educate the public about food production value chain. For example Cassava has about 13 different products, like Ethanol, starch, Insecticide, and so on.
METHODOLOGY
Use voice SMS through mobile phones to tell the people about agriculture and not farming, tell them there is hope in agriculture.
Give them hope in agro-indrustry
Tell them they can be rich by exporting
Public speeches, television and radio broadcasts will also help