This is the story of the one question about global poverty we never thought to ask: who owns it? It’s a question with an unexpected answer, one that challenges everything that we thought we knew about what poverty is, and what we can do about it. This is a story of a powerful data-driven methodology being used in a dozen countries across 5 continents. It’s a new approach that puts poor families in charge of defining and diagnosing their own unique, multidimensional poverty—who by owning the problem, own the solution. This book is for all the governments, development NGOs, charities, dreamers, thinkers, doers and leaders who are frustrated with limiting their aspirations to reducing poverty, or alleviating its effects—and the lack of progress we face in doing either. This is a book about unleashing trapped energy within poor families to do the unthinkable: eliminate global poverty once and for all.
