Wednesday, May 14:
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E/ME 105 Product Design for the Developing World,
Engineers for a Sustainable World &
the Caltech Y Social Activism Speaker Series present
OUT OF POVERTY: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail
PAUL POLAK
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
12:00pm,
Thomas Hall, room 206, Caltech
This event is free and open to the public;
no tickets or reservations are required.
* "Out of Poverty" book-signing after the event *
** Boxed lunch available for the first 40 attendees **
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Paul Polak challenges us to launch a revolution in the way we in the West
think about water, agriculture, markets and design. Innovative design and
the ruthless pursuit of affordability, he argues, are key to long-term
impacts on poverty and to eradicating it worldwide. Polak and his
colleagues at IDE have interviewed 3,000 small farmers around the globe
over the past 25 years to help develop small-scale innovations that have
worked -- placing 750,000 acres of land under irrigation and proving that
farmers in developing countries can generate wealth by focusing on
high-value, labor-intensive cash crops.
In his book "Out of Poverty," Polak demonstrates that his approach --
helping small farmers increase their crop yield year-round with
innovative, low-cost agricultural tools -- is an effective way for the 800
million people living on one-acre farms worldwide to move out of poverty.
Challenging current conventional methods for alleviating poverty, Polak
exposes the "three poverty eradication myths" -- that we can donate people
out of poverty; that national economic growth will end poverty; and that
big business, operating as it does now, will end poverty.
"While it certainly is true that powerlessness, poor health, poor
education and absent transport infrastructure are important root causes of
poverty," Polak says, "there can be no question that the most direct and
cost-effective first step out of poverty is to find ways to help poor
people to increase their income."
Paul Polak is the founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE)
-- a global non-profit organization that has successfully helped 17
million people in developing countries escape poverty. So far, IDE has
successfully developed and distributed 200,000 of the world’s first small
farm drip-irrigation systems—costing farmers as little as $3 each, and 2
million $25 treadle pumps globally.
Past Events
11/29/2007: Peter Cleary/LIFESTRAW
Every day, 6,000 people (mostly children) die from drinking dirty water. Half of the world's poor suffer from water borne diseases. The Swiss-based Vestergaard-Frandsen company has developed a revolutionary device called LifeStraw to ensure that simple access to safe drinking water becomes a basic human right. LifeStraw is a personal, mobile, water-purification tool that turns even the dirtiest water into safe drinking water.
11/14/2007: Kevin Sites
Award-winning solo journalist, Kevin Sites discussed his insightful journalistic memoir
"In the Hot Zone: One Man. One Year. Twenty Wars." and the accompanying documentary
"A World of Conflict".
Over the course of one year, Sites, a veteran combat correspondent, covered twenty
conflict zones consecutively, seeking to understand the real costs of a world
perpetually at war. What he learned was a simple, but declarative truth -- war is
not about combatants and the clashing of armies -- but about the systematic destruction
of civil life -- civilians and society.
10/18/2007: Chris Mooney
It may be the most fraught issue in meteorology today: is global warming increasing the ferocity
of hurricanes? In this talk, Mooney introduced the relatively new science of "hurricane
climatology" and surveys the political, social, and meteorological context that made it
matter so much. In the process, he explains what scientists can learn from such high-profile
conflicts, about how to communicate their knowledge to a media and public desperate for it./p>
11/15/2006: Rev. George Regas
"The IRS has gone after All Saints Church, where I served as Rector for 28 years,
for a sermon I preached before the 2004 Presidential election. They say this anti-war
sermon was political intervention in favor of Senator Kerry. Since I stated I was
not endorsing a candidate, this position of the IRS is one which implies the pulpit
is not free to speak truth to power, to be critical of positions taken by the
administration. My address attempts to address these critical issues."
-- Rev. Dr. George F. Regas
[More...]
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The Caltech Y Social Activism Speaker Series student-run organization of Caltech (California Institute of Technology, CIT). Caltech is in Pasadena, California, near Pasadena City College (PCC),
Past Speakers include: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Margaret Mead, Tim Wise, Saul Alinsky, Betty Friedan, Senator Barry Goldwater, Ted Sorensen, Dolores Huerta, Nikki Giovanni, Carl Rogers. Also Jody Williams, William F. Buckley, Jr., Huwaida Arraf & Adam Shapiro, Theodore Postol, Tahmeena Faryl, Amy Goodman. And recently: Scott Ritter, Adam Werbach, Julian Bond, D.C. James, Peter Camejo, Rahul Mahajan, Gerard Ungerman, Bernie Sanders, Mike Farrell, Peter Dreier, Chuck Collins, Ka Hsaw Wa, Kurt Gottfried, Steve Barr, Nikki Giovanni, Chris Mooney, Jack DuVall, Maquiladora workers, George Regas, Reagan Demas, Kevin Sites, Invisible Children, Life Straw.
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