It is estimated that roughly 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty. That means one in seven people subsist on the equivalent of $1.25 or less a day. Poverty is considered a “meta-issue”—it affects virtually every sector of development and dominates people’s lives. Because of poverty, girls go uneducated, preventable diseases spread, maternal and child mortality rates soar and environmental degradation worsens due to resource exploitation.
In September of 2000, leaders from 147 countries pledged they would halve the portion those living in extreme poverty by 2015, using 1.9 billion—the poverty rate in 1990—as the baseline. This became the first of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The years since the millennium have seen the fastest reduction in poverty in history. The first MDG was not only met but also reached five years ahead of schedule.
2015 marks the starting point for a new surge of coordinated action to eliminate extreme poverty, with 2030 set as the goal post. At a 2013 press conference, World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, wrote the year “2030” onto a piece of paper and said: “This is it. This is the global target to end poverty.” His statement echoed President Barack Obama’s own promise earlier that year: “the United States will join with our allies to eradicate such extreme poverty in the next two decades.” The UN has placed the mandate of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 at the heart of its post-2015 development agenda. The international community is now poised to get extreme poverty rates to the “zero zone.”
Our Approach
Eliminating poverty is often approached as a lofty goal with the lived experience of those trapped in extreme poverty easily lost in statistics. This theme will build an understanding of how an individual or a family might experience poverty as they struggle to create a life for themselves or a future for their children. To do this, we will explore three different contexts where those in extreme poverty face distinct sets of challenges: Rural Poverty, Urban Poverty, Displacement Poverty.
Effective programs use holistic approaches. Poverty has many interrelated causes and effects. Any program that addresses only a single issue is in danger of being undermined by a host of other issues. Our focus is on the most comprehensive, cross-cutting approaches to poverty that empower those most marginalized, enabling them to access vital services and resources while strengthening their ability to support themselves and their families.
With this goal, Battery Powered will be looking at interventions that integrate all three of the following approaches for change:
The Possibilities
Those who join the fight to end extreme poverty can improve people’s lives on many, many levels—from financial inclusion to improved health, education and access to services. And because poverty is a legacy that is often passed from parent to child, interrupting that cycle can benefit generations of people.
The world has never been more connected or had greater collective will to tackle the poverty felt by our global neighbors. We’ve also reached a time of unprecedented access to tools and strategies to effect change. As Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, has asserted, “the eradication of poverty is not just about ‘getting to zero’—it is also about staying there.” Programs that recognize the variety of obstacles that people face and offer practical, comprehensive solutions have the best chance of moving them along toward self-sufficiency. Our work this theme will be to identify and support poverty interventions with these ideals at their core.
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Rural Poverty →
