It sounds reductive to call “Who Owns Poverty?” (Red Press) a feel-good book about a thorny subject, but read it and you’ll find yourself feeling good. Also thinking expansively and looking for ways to implement the ideas it puts forth in your own neighborhood.
Dr. Martín Burt shares stories from his time working on microfinance projects and how they led him to create the Poverty Stoplight, an easy-to-use self-assessment tool that helps individuals and communities become more solvent and stable. It’s a paradigm-shifting piece of work.
Burt spent years running the Fundación Paraguaya, a subsistence agricultural school that was self-sufficient through a combination of microlending and sales from its farm and campus store. Through a providential expansion of the foundation’s modest programs and some wise input and assistance, the Poverty Stoplight was developed. Using either a paper chart with stickers or a simple app, families ascribe red, yellow, or green values to things like access to running water, having a safe home, sufficient income from a decent job, and access to health care, then creating a plan to get as much green (no poverty) on the board as possible. The information is collected and aggregated; it’s valuable research, but also offers a way to connect people with complementary red and yellow zones so they can help one another get to green.
After getting the program on its feet, employees briefly mutinied; Burt was worried until they told him they wanted to participate in it themselves! This was a revelation. They had good jobs — wasn’t that enough? It turns out that those close to the middle class still have areas of poverty in their lives, and what they want in terms of solutions is the same thing the very poor are clamoring for: A sense of agency when it comes to solving the problem. Combining the solution with the diagnosis was not accidental. Burt writes, “If poverty were a headache, we wanted to invent a thermometer made out of aspirin.”
The title poses a question, and it’s not rhetorical: When the poor “own” their poverty, they are more likely to eventually escape it. This can mean managing expectations for some — the opposite of poverty is not a million dollars — but also liberation for so many. The prescriptive nature of programs designed to help the poor limit their focus to issues — you need a pair of shoes, or an eye exam, or a refrigerator — and lose sight of the human beings who this is all supposed to benefit. Giving people the tools to solve problems doesn’t just make them feel good, it leads to more problems being solved.
Burt is frank about his failures along the way, and a tendency to rush into plans like this without adequately consulting his partners in the venture. But that irrepressible attitude makes “Who Owns Poverty?” a complete delight to read. It’s touching to see clients who have grown used to the stigma attached to poverty look at the Stoplight and cheer when they see how easy it is to overcome. In Burt’s view, if you are aware of what you need and have the tools to ask for and attain it, you have in effect joined the middle class; you are an empowered citizen and participant in your community. It’s not about a specific income level, or a two car garage, and that in itself is a radical shift.
Burt’s applications for government support to expand the Stoplight were generally met with derision or dismissal. But redefining poverty and class can ease the strain of capitalism and let the planet breathe. Before building new housing, refurbish existing spaces to make them habitable. Improve infrastructure like public transportation so a car is not a necessity. Crucially, don’t decide what someone else needs or might find helpful without asking them first! Collect data from households, then pair them up with others nearby who have compensating skills. Suddenly you’ve got a community invested in raising one another up together.
There are so many ideas bubbling forth in “Who Owns Poverty?” It’s inspiring on virtually every page, and not just timely but a potential force for great and positive change. Don’t let the ideas here stay confined between covers. Use them.
Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2019
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