TEDxSFU Shawn Smith
A speaker argues that solving global poverty requires a fundamental shift away from material donations and top-down fixes toward supporting local people and ideas. He highlights that true progress comes from catalyzing self-sustaining community efforts, exemplified by a 14-year-old boy in Malawi building his own electricity solution. Ultimately, donors should support organizations that are self-critical and focused on lasting systemic change, rather than merely applying temporary Band-Aid solutions. ## Speakers & Context - Speaker: Unspecified role in the social change/development sector. - Setting/Occasion: Presentation discussing global poverty and potential solutions. - Framing: Critique of common, often ineffective, approaches to poverty alleviation, emphasizing the need for a paradigm shift. ## Theses & Positions - The natural reaction to observing global poverty is often disengagement. - Engagement is frequently motivated by guilt, illustrated by infomercial donation appeals. - Common approaches incorrectly view poverty solely as a "lack of material goods" or "stuff." - Education is taught by teachers and good curriculum matters, which is a "software" issue often ignored in favor of tangible "hardware." - Purely consumptive acts of giving, like buying charity shoes, are often "a solution looking for a problem more than anything." - Interventions from NGOs or government agencies providing "free stuff" can severely disrupt struggling local markets. - Large international bodies (like the UN) are adept at solving *known* problems but struggle with generating *innovative* solutions. - Change is best facilitated by supporting local people and ideas building within their own contexts, rather than imposing top-down models. - Market-based solutions and the inherent risk in entrepreneurship are complex and cannot be over-applied everywhere. - The goal must be to support initiatives that "catalyze things that will carry on beyond the funding period." ## Concepts & Definitions - **Social Change/Social Innovation/Social Entrepreneurship:** The general field of work discussed. - **Global Poverty:** The overarching issue, exemplified by the statistic of two billion people lacking electricity. - **Microfinance:** System of providing very small, trust-based loans to developing-world entrepreneurs to help them exit poverty. - **Systemic Change:** The desired, long-term structural improvement that current approaches often fail to achieve. - **Software vs. Hardware:** Distinction drawn between intangible elements like education/curriculum (software) and physical objects (hardware). ## Mechanisms & Processes - **Crowdfunding:** Method of raising funds through many small donations, used to fund education. - **Cross-subsidizing:** Model used by Aravan Eye Hospital, where paying patients fund free surgeries for those who cannot afford them. - **Solar Lighting Structuring (Delight):** Business model where the cost of the solar light is structured so that poor customers can afford it because they are already spending money on worse alternatives. - **Global Catalyst initiative:** A program that invests in very early-stage social entrepreneurs to help them prove their model and prepare for larger investment. - **Livelihoods Mechanism:** Pairing identified needs in an urban slum with local youth as distributors to build a functioning market. ## Timeline & Sequence - **Before/Past:** Will's family in Malawi lacked electricity, necessitating an effort to connect a battery to a windmill. - **Recent:** The speaker's organization ran a cycling tour from Vancouver to Tijuana, Mexico, which raised $30,000. - **Ongoing:** The speaker's organization is currently supporting initiatives like Livelihoods in Kenya. ## Named Entities - **Malawi:** Location where Will lives, indicating a lack of electricity access. - **Continental space of Africa:** Vast area discussed, noted for its massive size, diversity, and multitude of cultures/languages. - **Kenya:** Location where the Livelihoods project is active with Urban Street Youth. - **Oxford:** Location where Skull provides scholarships for social entrepreneurship MBAs. ## Numbers & Data - **14 years old:** Age of Will, the boy in Malawi. - **Two billion:** Estimated number of people globally lacking electricity. - **$2 a day:** Metric used to quantify poverty levels. - **$30,000:** Amount raised during the cycling tour from Vancouver to Tijuana. - **100 million:** Approximate number of people reached by microfinance initiatives to date. - **99 cent:** Standard price point of hamburgers at McDonald's, used as an efficiency model. - **Tens of thousands:** Number of free eye surgeries handled by Dr. V's hospital. - **270 students:** Number of students funded for a year through crowdfunding. - **$70,000:** Amount raised through crowdfunding while spending very little. - **$400:** Amount needed for Via to continue university education. - **$50,000:** Average grant amount for a project like those supported. - **10:** Number of new initiatives the speaker plans to support in the year going forward. ## Examples & Cases - **Will's family in Malawi:** Illustrates the struggle to generate electricity using a windmill and battery. - **Nelly Fado infomercial:** Used as an example of appeals designed to elicit donations based on guilt. - **Buying Tom's Shoes:** Example of consumptive charity that can be ineffective. - **Community Shoe Business Disruption:** A local business struggling with sales was ruined by a free shoe drop from a well-intentioned NGO. - **Aravan Eye Hospital:** Example of using the efficiency principles of McDonald's to drastically lower the cost of eye care through cross-subsidization. - **Delight:** Solar lighting company demonstrating a sustainable business model by having the cost of the light factored into the customer's willingness to spend on worse alternatives. - **Via:** Student needing $400 for university, funded via crowdfunding, representing an investment in human potential. - **Livelihoods in Kenya:** Employing Urban Street Youth as distributors, creating a thriving market where distribution channels previously did not exist. - **Cycling Tour:** Raising $30,000 for "Sustainable Solutions to Global poverty" by riding from Vancouver to Tijuana. ## Tools, Tech & Products - **Battery:** Object Will is trying to connect to the windmill in Malawi. - **Windmill:** Device built from scratch by Will in Malawi to generate electricity. - **LifeStraw:** Mentioned as a clean water filtration device, but its efficacy is questioned. - **Solar lighting:** Product by Delight, implemented in Africa and India. ## References Cited - **Economist report:** Cited regarding six of the ten fastest-growing countries being in Africa. - **Nobel Peace Prize:** Award received by Dr. Muhammad Yunice for microfinance. ## Trade-offs & Alternatives - **Approach A (Material Focus):** Building schools or providing physical goods like water filters. - **Approach B (Market Focus):** Relying on market mechanisms versus the idealized intervention of charities. - **Approach C (Top-down vs. Bottom-up):** Imposing solutions versus recognizing and supporting what locals are building autonomously. - **Risk Assessment:** The difference between the risk of failure in investing in entrepreneurs versus the vulnerability of marginalized populations (e.g., Urban Street Youth). ## Counterarguments & Caveats - The common development mindset tends to focus too heavily on tangible hardware rather than systemic software needs. - Free goods interventions are inherently risky and can dismantle delicate local economies. - Large international bodies are skilled at addressing known problems but lack the capability to pioneer novel solutions. ## Methodology - Pattern recognition: Identifying the recurring destructive patterns in development aid/charity. - Deconstruction: Analyzing why previous models fail (e.g., over-reliance on outside funding/intervention). ## Conclusions & Recommendations - A necessary shift in perspective is required to define and approach poverty. - Support organizations that focus on cultivating human and intellectual capital (people and ideas). - Look for organizations that are "self-critical enough"—those that openly report on their failures as much as their successes. - Action must focus on creating lasting change that continues after external funding ceases. ## Implications & Consequences - If the status quo persists: Funding will eventually cease, leading to the collapse of supportive structures. - If the proposed approach succeeds: The world gains the capacity to tackle intractable issues through localized, evolving possibility. ## Open Questions - How can one successfully identify and support burgeoning local efforts before they become too large to support? - How can the global community develop the ability to see possibility in areas others dismiss as unfixable? ## Verbatim Moments - *"Teachers teach children and good curriculum matters and we don't tend to think about that software nearly as much as we think about the hardware and physical tangible stuff we can touch."* - *"Toms I think is a solution looking for a problem more than anything."* - *"it wasn't necessarily on us to come up with big brilliant ideas for how we could change the world and go out and try and Implement them in some sort of uniform way and impose them in in a top down top down manner"* - *"we're more than capable of tackling some of these in able issues"* - *"if we can find more wills and more livelihoods and more of these organizations that are envisioning new ways to tackle issues in their own communities"*