Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Laureate said: “Poverty does not belong in a civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That’s where it will be. When schoolchildren go with their teachers and tour the poverty museums, they will be horrified to see the misery and indignity of human beings. They will blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhumane condition and for allowing it to continue in such a large segment of population until the early part of the twenty-first century.”

Like the campaigns to end slavery, apartheid, racism and sexism, a tipping point did not come until there was a critical mass of people who knew about, and were willing to take action (together) on, the issues. 

I see Make Poverty History as trying to facilitate that critical mass of informed citizens to reach that tipping point. 

So based on this generalized summation, it seems increasing the number of anti-poverty advocates and their effectiveness is one of the overarching themes of our work. 

Now here’s the thing.  After we’ve identified the problem we’re dealing with – which we have, summarized as increasing the number of effective advocates to facilitate a critical mass – I see three general parts to this:

(1) Barriers to involvement – what are the problems;

(2) Actions that we can take with the hoped outcomes and why they’re significant - what are the solutions and which are effective;

(3) How to make them happen - and if relevant how they can happen elsewhere. 

It is interesting to note that these three broadly defined aspects of problem solving are applicable to not only poverty but to many issues.  It is also interesting to note that most “critics” of various systems rarely make it past the first part of the problem solving.    

So I have a question for you.  How do we make this happen? How do we mobilize this informed critical mass?  I have a variety of hypotheses on why we aren’t at the critical mass we need, but that just begs the questions what do we do about it and how.  It seems to me that we live in an entire culture of identifying the problem and thinking that consequently we’ve done all we can do. 

Identifying problems is easy but at best that’s only one third of the equation.  

I know worlds of people who are focused on the problems, but dishearteningly all too few who are focused on the solutions.  And this is where the most work has to be done. 

So as we move into a big year leading up to the G8 2010 here in Canada let’s put some more focus on problem solving – not just protesting.  Protesting isn’t an end in itself.  It’s important not to forget that.  Essentially, after the problem has been identified it is one of the most immediately apparent easy next steps that one can take.  And unless pursued in harmony with a variety of other complimentary approaches, its effects are vastly limited. Protesting and problem solving are not at odds with each other much of the time, yet far too often there seems to be a confusion of the two.