Ending Global Poverty: A Guide to What Works

by Stephen C. Smith

Book Overview

Over 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger, and over ten million children die each year from preventable causes. These may seem like overwhelming statistics, but as Stephen Smith shows in this call to arms, global poverty is something that we can and should solve within our lifetimes. Ending Global Poverty explores the various traps that keep people mired in poverty, traps like poor nutrition, illiteracy, lack of access to health care, and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0230606156
• ISBN13: 9780230606159
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Real solutions

This is Stephen C. Smith's guide to ending poverty. What it is, how it happens, why it continues (he lists what he calls poverty traps) and what the world and you personally can do to help. I did not read this book straight through, I skipped around starting at 'What you can do to help', then searching the index, then 'Escaping the cruel trap of poverty', then the introduction, then finally chapter one 'Understanding extreme poverty' and on to chapter two. When I hit page 40 in chapter two 'The keys to capability, eight keys to escapeing poverty traps, the sixth key' and was told about Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, population estimated at one million. and the Flying toilets, I thought who would want to save a people like that? The children YES asap!. The adults, NO. Paragraph 4. "Lacking public toilets, let alone sanitation in the home, people defecate into plastic bags and hurl them out the door onto their neighbors' roofs. This would be bad enough, but apparently the hurlers often fall short of their targets. A UN study found that the majority of the landlords of Kibera were actually government officials and politicians. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_toilet "Piles of polyethene bags (full of human excrement) gather on roofs and attract flies. Some of them burst open upon impact and/or clog drainage systems. If they land on fractured water pipes, a drop in water pressure can cause the contents to be sucked into the water system. People can also be hit by the bags as they are blindly tossed. In the rainy season, drainage including excrement can enter residences; some children even swim in it. Such close contact leads to fears of diseases such as diarrhea, skin disorders, typhoid fever and malaria. The practice of defecating outside, away from one's house, especially in the dark, causes concern for one's personal safety as well, especially among girls and women." I couldn't read any more after that. There is no hope for the human species, imo, because we destroy every thing we touch. I'm ashamed. Great book tho.

Practical Insights

My sister had left this book on top of the living room table, and curious to the solutions presented, I decided to take a look. The author is an economist, but he has gained a lot of knowledge from working on this issue. As such, you can't really compare this to a social science textbook for college, but it made for a stimulating read at the start, finding out the problems that the world's poor face. The structure of the book is straightforward: 1. The nature of the problem. 2. Specific elements that cause poverty. 3. Case studies of successful organizations that addressed parts of #2. 4. What you can do to get involved. #3 was thin and muddling at some parts, because the author's professional background seemed to incline him to get technical, as opposed to narrative, and there wasn't a big of a contrast to the success stories that organizations had for other poverty issues. But on the whole, the book was a fine read for someone who has never been exposed to these type of issues. If there is a better book, I'm sure it will rise to the top. The price could be a few dollars cheaper and I would be completely satisfied to buy my own. Also, it seems to have a picture of the Great Depression for the cover, which the book doesn't get into at all. Lots of links and resources at the end to get involved. A book that's worth the time and effort.

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