More Than Gut Feelings When Solving Poverty?

FOCUSING ‘FIXERS’ ON IMPACTS

Our condensed 7 word plan for solving poverty is: define poverty; map poverty; focus the fixers (6 words if you leave out “the”). We have written elsewhere an introduction to the third step of ‘focusing fixers’. You may find it helpful to read that article before you delve into the detail of this one. Here, we plan to expand on how fixers can focus more on outcome impacts, through the effective mechanism of MEASUREMENT.

Solving Poverty, comparing apples with apples

The 7 Layer Poverty Model takes advantage of a specific definition of poverty, that we can use effectively for measurement. Our proposal, in the absence of some better tool, is to use the metrics from Simple Assessment Studies or estimates, to provide an approximation to the overall impact of any course of action, or poverty reduction initiative. This is a useful approach for comparing and choosing between investment decisions BEFORE any commitment of resources has been made.  The same tool can be used to conduct a separate Simple Assessment after the particular project, allowing decision-makers to assess the ACTUAL impact, versus the PREDICTED impact.

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A COMMON GLOBAL MODEL FOR DECISION-MAKING?

We are going to stick our necks out here. Almost all decisions made by any group anywhere in the world ever, have 3 KEY COMMON COMPONENTS. Like we said – necks out. All decision-making can be better understood by gaining a better idea of how those 3 components operate and affect the resulting DECISIONS. We are particularly interested here in how those decisions help us solve poverty, but they apply equally to all types of decision. They are:

  1. The Decision-Making Unit (DMU)
  2. The Decision-Making Process (DMP); and
  3. The Basis of Decision (BOD).

Boat woman wearing palm-leaf conical hat, Can Tho floating market, Delta of Mekong, Vietnam.

The DMU can be anything from an individual, through to the entire national voting mechanism of the World’s largest democracy (India), which is currently under way in April 2014, with over 800 million people potentially involved (ie. the ‘electorate’). The ‘decision’ in this latter case, is who should be elected into national political power for the next term in office. But at the other end of the scale, the decisions the individual makes can be as simple as ‘shall I have a coffee now?’ Both the individual and 800+ million Indian voters constitute ‘decision-making units’, for those different scenarios. Thankfully, we don’t need to ask 800 million people every time we want make a decision about a cup of coffee. Imagine the wait in line at Starbucks!

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And this is partly our point. We give various decision-making tasks to various different groups, of all shapes, sizes and memberships – but they are all DMU’s. There is no single PROCESS for all such decisions that they make, but they still all FOLLOW a process – however, haphazard and obscure such processes may sometimes seem, or indeed be. Some people may make serious life decisions based on horoscopes, or a throw of the dice. Elsewhere, the decision-making process may be by such things as secret ballots, canvassing opinions, a ‘show of hands’, or it may just be that whoever is considered the overall leader has to make the final decision – as will often be the case in military decisions and organisations. At the other end, you may have made some of your own decisions on the toss of a coin, or by trusting a “gut feeling“. In all cases, there was a process. The same is also true of our fixers, when it comes to making their decisions about tackling poverty.

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Countless decisions, by government politicians, NGO Boards, multilateral Councils and their various equivalents, are made around the world, in the common pursuit of solving poverty – always following their respective processes. In many cases, the process will include the presenting of information, before the relevant members of the DMU assess that information (through internal or external discussion and debate) and then move towards a decision. That decision may be put to some kind of majority vote, left to a single individual, steered towards or consensus, or deferred. However, even a decision to defer a decision is also a decision itself.  Such DMP approaches have been used worldwide for centuries – even millennia. But what of the flawed and fallible people who MAKE those decisions?

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Their individual BEHAVIOUR is determined by the third item on our list: the Basis of Decision. The BOD is perhaps the hardest element to work out, for each individual involved. We recognise that information of some sort will typically have been shared, before any decision is sought. However, it would be wrong to assume that all decisions are made on the basis of the content of that information alone. There may be all kinds of other factors influencing the BOD of each member of the DMU – and each individual’s BOD may itself be different – sometimes significantly so.

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A simple illustration would be the example of a bribe. If a member of the International Olympic Committee has to vote on the selection of the next City venue for the Olympics, it is conceivable that they may make their decision based on the expectation of a bribe – rather than the specific merits of any given city, or the information presented about it. (We neither confirm nor deny such ideas; we merely state that they are conceivable). In other circumstances, individuals in decision-making meetings may have some less obvious vested interest in a particular outcome. They may also simply dislike the person making the proposal, so will vote against the ideas based on that negative feeling, rather than a lack of compelling information. On a more positive note, people may be inclined to vote based on conscience, faith, practical limitations, personal fears, differing risk assessments, or just plain strength of “gut feeling”. They may not even be able to explain to you exactly WHAT their BOD was, after they have cast their vote. As human beings, we regularly have to operate on limited information – and even the information we do have may itself be misleading.

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One of the areas where this is currently globally evident is around the complex area of global climate change. In this arena, we find lots of passionate debate, by various experts, around what the likely future climate scenarios will be and the best ways to respond to them.  Gathering the ‘fixers’ to solve poverty can sometimes appear equally challenging. However for poverty, there is no single, internationally recognised group, interfacing as a ‘boundary organisation’ between decision-makers and differing expert opinions, with the overall brief to arrive at a consensus. For climate change, there is the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change). For poverty, which is literally killing millions more every year than climate change, there is no such consensus body. Even if there was this single DMU, it would clearly not replace the many other DMUs, DMPs and BODs that would still continue to operate around the world every day.

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A MORE STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DECISION-MAKING

So how can we FOCUS all the disparate groups collectively involved in overcoming poverty better? We have no plan for changing their DMUs, but would welcome the global equivalent of the IPCC for poverty. We have no alternative model for their respective decision-making processes either. The KEY area where we advocate improvement, is in their respective BODs. This may in turn influence change in the other 2 key decision-making elements, but that is not specifically our agenda here. We firmly believe that better quality information will facilitate better quality decision-making overall. The 7 Layer Poverty Model provides a compelling conceptual framework for a better understanding of what poverty is and how it can be overcome more effectively in a co-ordinated way.

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We have proposed and included below an Excel spreadsheet, that incorporates certain ideas for focusing fixers. ‘If you want to improve in any area, measure it more frequently’. People tend to focus more on what they think they will be measured on. Regarding improving the BOD on any and all decisions being made with respect to solving poverty, we want to focus attention on measuring output impacts for given project ‘inputs’. These range from your own individual decisions about where you invest your own time, efforts, energies, attention and resources – to where the UN and the European Union decide to invest theirs. We believe that the final BOD on behalf of all public and charitable bodies can be much clearer and more transparent than at present – and we want to help make that transition a little easier.

Investment Priority Evaluation Template_V1_April 2014

25 WAYS THIS TOOL WILL HELP YOU

We have come up with 25 useful things that the spreadsheet above helps bring out. There are more, but these will do for now. We suggest you download the spreadsheet and ideally have it open (or a copy of it) so you can cross check each point we make.

  1. The first column is entitled ‘Item Ref’, as any user of the sheet may wish to allocate their own unique internal project code, or identifier. Each separate line of the sheet may be allocated to parts of an integrated project, that may have different kinds of impact benefits in different layers of the 7 Layer Poverty Model. An example might be a village water project, intended to have drinking water, health and sanitation (shelter) benefits, all from the one project. This can be represented as 1 cost line and multiple benefit lines, or the overall cost may be divided between the multiple benefit lines.
  2. The Poverty Model category relates to the most relevant layer of the 7 Layer Poverty Model, that any project or initiative fits into.
  3. The list of Project and Program types will be a list that is most relevant to the organisation using the sheet. We have included a range of visible and varied types, which are evident in public literature on solving poverty. Our short list of 21 items illustrates just how varied those poverty reduction initiatives can be.
  4. We have shown project cost in thousands of US dollars, as a recognised international currency standard. This is perhaps easier for international sharing. Clearly, the currency header can be changed, along with later calculation columns using the cost figures.
  5. The next 3 columns deal with measures for Importance, Urgency and Ease. These are intended to relate to these factors in the destination location for the activity, meaning how urgent the felt need is ‘on the ground’. We have proposed a system where 1 is the top priority, so the smaller the number, the greater the priority. It could equally be used the other way around, such that the higher the number, the greater the priority. It is the user’s choice. Each organisation must determine its own set of criteria for determining importance, urgency and ease. Importance may be driven by assessed impacts on lives, health and quality of life measures for estimated total populations. Urgency will typically reflect the relative effects of certain inflexible time pressures, such as drought season dates, harvest times and time to exhaustion of current key supplies at current consumption rates. Ease will reflect multiple compound conditions that all operationally help or hinder activities.
  6. The figures for urgency, importance and ease are then MULTIPLIED in our system. This increases the effect on the overall scale of possible resulting numbers. It is intended to reflect the compound benefits and prioritisation of things which are important, urgent and easy to fix. These would typically commend themselves as top priorities on these metrics alone – in terms of operational project desirability. The ‘ease’ measure only reflects in-location operational constraints, rather than other wider potential constraints.
  7. All the columns have Excel Filters activated, to enable the user to show just the rows of a given type, or ranked high-to-low, or low-to-high. This enables quick and easy cross comparisons between projects on different rows.
  8. The right-hand side of the sheet comes on to deal with IMPACTS. In the absence of some better measures, we propose the number of people impacted is a key measure. Note, we have only assumed positive impacts, but recognise that some may need to reflect potentially negative impacts too and will need to amend this basic template accordingly. The number of people in all cases will need to be a best estimate, rather than no estimate at all. Assumptions which any estimate is based upon can be recorded as notes on the sheet as necessary.
  9. The people number estimates are divided into ‘first year’ and ‘lifetime’, recognising that various organisations may need to show progress and results in different timeframes. Projects may need to be broken down into phases, such as construction and maintenance phases, for example. The different time periods allow decision-makers to make comparisons between possible short term goals and long term objectives.
  10. The ‘average model score increase’ may be different between the first year and lifetime of a project. In all cases, an average assessment may be challenging, but the aim here is the ‘best available data’, rather than ‘no data at all’. When projects are undertaken, there is a reasonable expectation that certain individuals will benefit in certain ways. These should be measurable in most cases by the Simple Assessment method. Otherwise, some alternative key performance indicator estimate will need to be used. The average score is suggested, as some may benefit more than others. For example, a new water pump will benefit more remote households less than those in its immediate vicinity.
  11. The numbers of impacted people are then multiplied by the average model improvement impacts, to give a total year 1 score and a lifetime score. The significance of appropriately measuring the lifetime scores in terms of benefits becomes apparent. This may assist with an understandable tendency towards short-termism in certain scenarios. For example, those with elections coming up may be pressing for quick progress on certain key publicity projects, while there may be significantly greater benefit for projects that deliver long after the elections are decided.
  12. In the absence of some better measure, we propose the overall ‘Model Improvement’ per US$1000. This might equally be any other relevant currency unit, or unit scale of measure, depending on the needs of the assessment. A village will clearly be looking on a different scale than a nation, but they can still both use the same common principles of impact measurement.
  13. The 2 yellow shaded columns relate to INTERNAL factors within the organisation. The last column might be used to identify various project stages, such as: under consideration, approved, under way, maintenance phase, completed and so on.
  14. The other yellow column is an internal weighting factor. There may be various things that determine this number, which are organisation-specific. They may relate to the kinds of things sponsors are particularly pressing for, or there may be reasons that the organisation wants to make a particular project type a higher priority – such as a proof-of-concept, or pilot study projects. There may also be external factors too.  Action Aid in the UK has a commitment from the UK government to MATCH any donations given by a specific date this year, specifically related to a gender equality initiative. Hence, they may weight the programme more heavily up until that date, as effectively half their associated costs would be externally matched. The single weighting factor allows for a consolidated, overall internal assessment of how different projects might suit different organisations. The “impact” figure that results may simply be used for internal decision-making purposes.
  15. There is quite a dramatic difference in the impacts of certain initiatives when measured this way. A certain amount of ‘sanity-checking’ between impact estimates and other projects is wise.  Any significant anomalies can be referenced and explained in notes within the sheet itself.
  16. One of the things that may be identified, is where certain projects may NOT be to an organisation’s strengths, but could have significant impact increases, if completed by a collaboration partner. For example, when building wells, one organisation may be set up for construction. Another might be set up for re-training local farm labourers as mechanics. The former might share the benefit of the ‘lifetime impact’ figures with another organisation, which can train the engineers to keep the water pumps repaired. This way, significant lifetime benefit increases can be shown with minimal increase in costs. This highlights the multiplied benefits of collaboration between organisations, when overcoming widespread poverty.
  17. Note that the internal weighting factor we used worked on a scale of 0-10. This permitted fractions, where a given project was not in an organisation’s core skills to deliver.
  18. The types of projects listed range from direct local action to high-level political advocacy. Both have their merits. At the higher levels, where multiple organisations may be conducting advocacy, co-ordination between those organisations on the commonly-agreed benefit estimate would be more compelling than a diverse range of estimates. By contrast, we have included ‘Shoes Project #1’ as an example of the “bright idea” project, where organisations think of something that they intend to capture the public imagination. In this case, the idea was to send 1000 pairs of shoes from Europe to the poor in Africa. In practice, the project would be very expensive and time-consuming, yielding little actual benefit. However, it might be the kind of thing that captures media attention and free publicity for more impactful projects.
  19. The model improvements are calculated by working out theoretical (but possible) numbers for the relevant individuals on the relevant sections of the Poverty Profile of the individual. This is all condensed into a single number for calculation purposes. In the average model score increase for year 1. within the cell, the component calculation is shown. It is possible that the calculations happen on a different sheet (eg a Simple Assessment source sheet) and the resulting Poverty Profile numbers can then be fed directly into this sheet, for impact calculations. This helps reviewers understand the origins of the different impact measure calculations.
  20. The significant impact of the ‘zero’ effect on overall totals, can be seen with the Africa Water #1 project. In the imagined scenario, the availability and accessibility of the community water supply were already ‘high’, but the pollution of the existing supply required an urgent newly-drilled replacement well. This turned a zero figure into the maximum 27 figure on the impact assessment model improvement. This highlights the potential for certain ‘quick-wins’, with dramatic potential improvements possible in certain situations. This scoring system will help highlight such projects and so help motivate fixers to take swift and effective action on them.
  21. The difference between certain projects can be well-illustrated using this approach, The cost of building a primary school is illustrated Africa Primary School #2. It’s impact can be measured directly by how many pupils can be expected to attend that school. However, many of those pupils might still attend ANOTHER school, of that new school wasn’t built. So the new school impact should really be measured in terms of convenience and NET increase in school attendance numbers. School projects may be popular with locals, as it can directly save them significant school costs per child. In that respect, the project is changing the accessibility to the Engagement aspect of primary school education, rather than its availability, or its attributes necessarily.
  22. In terms of child sponsorship, it may be that the ability to purchase uniforms and materials is the key requirement, having the biggest net impact on local school attendance. Having a measurement system like this gives a more analytical way to compare overall positive impacts per donor dollar, for different kinds of solving poverty ideas. Providing transport to a school and child sponsorship within it may prove more cost effective than building a new school, for example. Only accurate assessment based on informed local insight can tell.
  23. It is recognised that the higher levels of the Humanitarian Basics can be more challenging to quantify, in terms of impacts. The example of advocacy for freedom of the press in Civil Liberties #3 illustrates this, The number of people impacted over the lifetime of such a project could be very high, but there is also a risk component attached. The lobbying may take place and no change could occur. This could be reflected in the internal weighting measure, Such higher risk projects may be better shared with other organisations, who also share the costs.
  24. Remarkable claims should ideally be backed by remarkable levels of evidence to substantiate them. Hence, if the number of people impacted in a project lifetime runs into thousands or millions, then clearly decision-makers will want to have such claims backed up by more rigorous research data. It may even merit a pilot project to further back up the claims in practice.
  25. The columns, calculations and project examples are our own. The 3 decision drivers of importance, urgency and ease of execution have been tried and tested. The application of the Poverty Model improvement measures is new. Our purpose is to give decision-makers a flexible tool and an idea of how to use it to arrive at better, more structured and more consistent decision-making. Users are free to adapt it to come up with better versions themselves. The common goal is to help focus fixers on maximising their output impacts, in the interest of overcoming more poverty sooner.

We trust that you find this examination of our basic template useful. We would be interested to hear of helpful experiences of using it in practice in solving poverty. As ever, if you have better ideas on how to better focus the poverty fixers, we would love to hear them.

Until then, we thank you for being…

One in a Billion!

Can You Solve Poverty In 7 Words?

HOW TO SOLVE POVERTY

Can you solve the complex challenge of global poverty in just 7 words?  Well, yes and no – and perhaps not for the reasons you think.  Firstly, let’s deal with an obvious point.  Words alone won’t solve it; but the actions that those words imply, just might.  “Words are the clothes that thoughts wear”.  Such words thus embody ways of thinking, which in turn can drive behaviour and that lasting change in behaviour can, we contend, ultimately solve poverty.

But what do we MEAN by poverty?

A good reason to solve poverty sooner, solving poverty makes a difference

“DEFINE POVERTY. MAP POVERTY. FOCUS THE FIXERS”

These are our 7 words. Or six if you leave out ‘the’.  To expand this summary a little, our contention is that in order to overcome, or otherwise solve poverty, we need to do 3 things better than we have done, up until now:

  1. Define the problem
  2. Map, or otherwise measure and represent the problem; and then
  3. Focus the various stakeholders, or ‘fixers’ who are individually and collectively motivated to overcome the problem.

Progress can be and is being made WITHOUT doing these 3 things as well as we might.  Our view is that existing efforts by existing ‘fixers’ will prove far more effective if there is better co-ordination and agreement between them. Simply put, we will get much more done with the same, or less resources, if we all know more clearly what we are all doing where, together with why and how we are doing it. It is simply looking for consistent and clear answers to Rudyard Kipling’s classic ‘6 Honest Serving Men’:  who, when, where, what, why and how.

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CAN YOU DEFINE POVERTY?

This post specifically tackles the first step, summarised in the first two words: ‘define poverty’.  What’s your definition?  Did you ever look it up in a dictionary? Dictionary.com has three! You can check them out. The first includes the phrase: “The state, or condition of having little, or no money, goods, or means of support”. The second says “The deficiency of necessary, or desirable goods or ingredients”.  Both of these are helpful, but they are not universal. Worse still, they are not particularly memorable. Do you think you will remember them tomorrow? Or even in 5 minutes time?  And how well do you think a 5 year old would do understanding them & discussing them with their friends? Exactly…

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Now imagine trying to spread that common understanding to 7 billion people across some 200 countries and speaking thousands of different languages. Not easy, right?  No wonder we encounter some difficulty in tackling a problem that we collectively even struggle to define memorably.

CAN WE BUILD A MORE USEFUL DEFINITION?

Yes. We looked at a number of sources and combined that with some practical thinking, recognising that we specifically wanted a definition we could USE analytically, which would help focus the very efforts to solve the problem, which the word itself was labelling. We recognised the idea of poverty was not new. In Isaiah chapter 58, within the Bible, the writer lists some basic social standards that were expected of the people: ‘when you see the naked, clothe them’, ‘share your food with the hungry’ and ‘provide the poor wanderer with shelter’. These words were originally written several thousand years ago. They remain very practical today.

.Ethiopian Orthodox Christians in church, faith groups help solve poverty

Fast forward to the 21st century and Wikipedia’s definition of ‘absolute poverty’ covers some strikingly common ground.  Their list refers to “the deprivation of basic human needs, which commonly includes food, water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, health care and education”. Those agreeing the Millennium Development Goals might well have had such definitions of absolute poverty in mind.

poverty images, acute poverty, poverty statistics and solve poverty sooner

Now compare those lists to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, or motivations. If you are not familiar with Maslow’s work, you can find out more at Wikipedia, among other sources. In summary, he found that people the world over, were motivated by different things at different times. Nothing amazing there, you might think. However, Maslow’s remarkable insight was that these human motivations were typically organised into a hierarchy, whether or not we are consciously aware of it. This meant that people tended to start off with motivations at basic levels of survival and security, before moving on to ‘higher’ level motivations, regarding such things as belonging and achievement.

7 Layer Poverty Model V1_Mar2014

Our particular reason for referencing Maslow’s work here is its ability to model apparently complex, highly differentiated real-world human behaviours into a fairly simple model. That model can be consistently applied to all kinds of people, at all kinds of times and in all kinds of places.  It allows flexibility in its terms, such that the “achievement” layer can be uniquely interpreted for each individual, while the underlying desire to “achieve” is common to all.  The Concise Oxford English Dictionary has referred to “success” as ‘the achievement of that which was aimed at’. Our aim here is clear: solve poverty.

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In that sense, Maslow’s model allowed that different people may well be aiming at vastly different things, but that they were all tending to aim at something! The aiming itself, reflected the common underlying motivation of a desire to achieve. It is this same approach, of simple commonality underlying apparent complexity, which we borrow for our own definition of poverty. We also make use of insights from Maslow’s lower motivation layers of survival, security and belonging.

The stilt fishermen at work, Sri Lanka, Asia. Solve global poverty sooner

One more vital component in our definition, before we proceed. It is the core idea that poverty is ‘relative’, not ‘absolute’. Organisations like the United Nations and the World Bank understandably promote the generally adopted definition of ‘extreme poverty’ as those who live on the equivalent of US$1.25 a day. This approach is useful for their own purposes, as both population figures and GDP figures for UN member (and other) countries go back a long way and are readily accessible, country by country, region by region.  This is impressively illustrated by the stunning short video on global poverty indicators by Hans Rosling, called “200 Countries, 200 Years“. You will be amazed at how much complexity Rosling explains with such simplicity in 4 minutes. Do watch it. It has our highest commendation.

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Percentage of Country Population on Under US$2/Day (UN 2009)

POVERTY DEFINED

“The relative absence of the 7 Humanitarian Basics”.

Unpacking this definition, observe the following. It is written in adult language, but the underlying ideas can still be conveyed in simple terms. Instead of “relative absence of”, the 5 year olds we had in mind might say “not enough of”. Which brings us to the second observation.  Poverty should be understood at its core and from the outset as relative. But that does not mean we cannot measure and compare it.

image of poverty? solve poverty with best poverty models and poverty solutions

Consider human height. Like many attributes from the natural world, it follows a typical ‘normal distribution curve’ of values, when comparing 7 billion people to each other.  When measured in absolute terms, everyone’s height is different. If taller is better, then in that sense, we can compare the absolute measure of height, to give us the relative measure of whether people are taller (‘richer’), or shorter (‘poorer’) than each other. If I am 6 feet tall, then I am relatively shorter than pretty much all the USA basketball team, the Harlem Globetrotters. if I was in that team, I might well FEEL short among that group of peers. Among my usual peers in my own country, I am considered tall and indeed I feel tall. So how I see myself and how others see me is relative and is affected by my perceived position among my peers. There is no single, absolute global definition for ‘tallness’, or ‘shortness’. They are relative terms. And so is ‘poverty’.

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Nevertheless, I can measure my actual height with some precision, always knowing that my feelings and perceptions of “tallness” and “shortness” are driven relatively. The same is true with our definition of poverty. It allows for the experience of poverty in relative terms, but accommodates its measurement in more absolute terms. These two simultaneous aspects of the definition make it more useful for our wider purposes.

best reason to solve relative poverty, absolute poverty and any other kind

The last part of the definition relates to “humanitarian basics”. We choose ‘basics’ instead of ‘needs’, because the things we list are not all truly necessary for sustaining human life. You can get by without some of them – and billions of people alive today do. Instead, we prefer the notion of basics, a minimum standard. We use ‘humanitarian’, instead of ‘human’, because people are perfectly capable of surviving and even thriving as humans without having in place all 7 of the ‘basics’ we list.

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Instead, we think in terms of a rational human being setting a fair and reasonable minimum acceptable standard for another human being, that they did not know. As our guide, we asked ourselves the question: “What would we consider a minimum standard, even for someone who we didn’t like?”

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POVERTY: THE 7 HUMANITARIAN BASICS

Thus we have our definition of poverty. But what are the 7 Humanitarian Basics that our definition refers to? They are drawn out and consolidated from the ancient Biblical Isaiah list, the modern Wikipedia definition of absolute poverty and the bottom 3 layers Maslow’s Hierarchy. They deliberately therefore draw on  understandings of poverty that have stood the test of time, while remaining thoroughly modern and relevant. They cluster certain ideas together for convenience, ease of recall and subsequent explanation to others. They are intended to be generic enough concepts to permit adaptation to relevant cultural experiences and variations. Each of them will be the subject of other posts, giving more explanation on each ‘Basic’. Posts will be suitably tagged to permit cross-referencing with other relevant posts on the subject.

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And the 7 Humanitarian Basics are:

1. Water.  2. Food.  3. Clothing.  4. Shelter.  5. Healthcare.  6. Engagement.  7. Freedom from Oppression.

Some will require further explanation and unpacking, which we will cover elsewhere on our web site and in these posts. By way of introduction, consider yourself dropped into the story of Robinson Crusoe, stranded on a remote island. Your own order of priorities will not be that different from the above list. That’s what makes it so universal and so memorable. In that sense and by our definition, Crusoe suddenly found himself lacking the 7 Humanitarian Basics & thus set about overcoming his own poverty.

Oasis from poverty, define poverty, relative poverty, absolute poverty

In the same way, please scan through our other material and see how this starting definition can move us from an intellectual exercise onto a practical one, helping to address the pressing lack of humanitarian basics faced by the poorest billion people on the planet.

And thanks again for being…

One in a Billion!

Poverty Measurement So Simple Your 5 Year Old Gets It

DOES SIMPLE MEAN STUPID?

Not necessarily.  When it comes to measuring, understanding & overcoming poverty, we want to avoid oversimplifying what can often be truly complex issues.  However, we also want to ensure that we DO simplify things to the point where MOST people can understand them.  That’s why we always want to keep in mind the idea of a 5 year old child discussing poverty issues with their friends.  If we can put things into terms that they can understand, then we figure the rest of the world should be able to follow right along. That’s where the 7 Layer Poverty Model comes in.

7 Layer Poverty Model

BETTER TO DUMB DOWN THAN SWITCH OFF?

When it comes to communicating a potentially complex idea like poverty, we realise that people can switch off quite quickly if they don’t follow you.  The precedent for us here is the message of “5 a day” regarding the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables in the regular human diet.  How many years did experts understand the benefits of more fruit and veg in our diets, but struggled to get their important message heard, until “5 a day” came along?

how to solve global poverty, overcome poverty with poverty solutons and poverty models

We know it is more complicated than that underneath the surface, but at least it is simple enough that kids will talk about it and multiple stakeholders in the issue (governments, health organisations, produce suppliers and parents) can get behind it.  So let’s not kill it with complexity!  There may well be a case for adding complexity to the 7 Layer Poverty Model with subsequent enhancements, or bespoke applications to a specific set of circumstances.  However, for the sake of the broadest possible understanding & adoption among the global stakeholders in overcoming poverty – let’s keep it simple for now. Agreed?

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UNDERSTANDING IS COMMUNICATION’S PRIMARY GOAL

After all, who wants to develop a model that is so complex that nobody else understands it?  You may achieve individual insight, but not collective understanding.  And for now, collective understanding is our more pressing goal.  And we have a billion people to reach. Lots of different languages to consider too. We believe that we will all overcome far more poverty, far more quickly and with far fewer resources, if we CO-ORDINATE our present efforts more effectively.  To improve co-ordination, we must first improve understanding.  To improve understanding, we must establish a common Poverty Model that is powerful enough that most stakeholders can use it, yet simple enough that most kids can understand it.

child poverty, child starvation, child poverty statistics, solve poverty for children

This is why we promote the 7 Layer Poverty Model and why we ask that you would do the same. So get sharing!

And once again, we thank you for being…

One in a Billion!