Design as a cure for poverty

What is “poverty?”

For some people it might mean going without the deluxe cable TV package.

For most of the world, it means going without the basics of life: food, water, shelter, clothing.

What’s the root of this kind of poverty?

Sometimes it’s injustice. For instance, in cases all over the world self-supporting peasant farmers haven been taken off their land at gunpoint so it can be turned over to commodity export farmers with political connections. For example, in Latin America, the rural poor are actually less well nourished than they were in the 1950s because now they work on plantations instead of operating their own modest, but productive farms.

But where things like injustice is not a cause, poverty is often not so much the result of lack of resources, it’s the result of lack of access to them.

Take a simple thing like water. One of the problems with water is it’s heavy – very, very heavy. And if you lack the expensive infrastucture to move water, then you’re stuck with carrying it. A shockingly large portion of humanity deals with this problem every day. Carrying heavy water over long distances, day in and day out, just to survive.

Can anything be done to help? Yes.

Here’s a fascinating video about designers who are specifically targeting the needs of the world’s most poor. When you see the simplicity of some of these solutions, you’ll wonder why it took so long for someone to think of them. Hey, better late than never.

Frankly, I find this stuff more way inspiring that the latest Internet gizmo:

New York Times Science Section video

– Ken McCarthy

P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.

If you’d like direction for your business that will work today, tomorrow and twenty years from now, visit us at the System Club.