Dr Paul Polak talk 11/12/09

Talk by Paul Polak at Mercy Corps headquarters on 11/12/09

last night I had the opportunity to hear a talk at the Mercy Corps Action Center in Portland. The Center is a really neat place with numerous interactive displays that show different problems around the world and encourage people to think about them and work on possible solutions. It's a fascinating program and very well done.
Also, there is is an exhibit currently set up there called “Design for the Other 90%”. It shows numerous examples of simple designs that can be implemented in the third world to improve the lives of people there. It includes a simple inexpensive treadle pump that small farmers can use to irrigate their crops, and a drip irrigation system that costs almost nothing and can double or triple food production of small farmers. There are inexpensive bicycles that can carry large loads and simple housing designs that can be easily purchased and built.
One of the neatest things I saw was a heavy duty water container shaped like a fat wheel with a hole in the middle. It probably holds about 10 gallons of water, and is designed to be rolled along the ground rather than carried. Since women world wide carry most of the water on their heads or backs this is a tremendous labor saving device.
The program is the idea of Dr. Paul Polak from Denver Colorado. His argument is that we focus our efforts and ideas on making stuff to sell to the 10% of the richest people in the world, things like cars and computers and appliances. He says the other 90% of the people in the world are mostly ignored on the assumption that they are too poor and too ignorant. According to him there are 3.5 billion people world wide who live on less than $2.00 a day. If we can design products that these people can use to improve their lives and make more money for themselves and their families they will buy them.
His quote is: “He sees billions of potential entrepreneurs who would rather earn money than accept handouts, if given the opportunity. And if companies would develop the products these people needed and wanted, he sees billions of potential customers as well.”
I had read Dr. Polak's book “Out of Poverty, What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail” and found it very interesting and provocative. So when I heard that he was speaking hear in Portland I was glad for the opportunity to hear him in person. He's a charming man who worked for many years as a Psychiatrist in Denver before forming International Development Enterprises to further his ideas about helping poor people achieve self-sufficiency.
In his talk he cited several examples of designs that have helped people. One is the foot operated treadle pump that looks like a stairmaster machine. Using it a farmer with his own labor can irrigate his own small plot in a few hours time.
Working in Nepal, Dr Polak started by interviewing many small farmers about what they needed and wanted. Then he worked with engineers to design a pump. They repeatedly redesigned it to make it simpler and simpler and cheaper to make. When they got the cost low enough they then took the design to about 150 small machine shops in Nepal, India and Bangladesh and taught then how to make the pumps. After that they went to thousands of small village stores throughout the countries and convinced them to stock and sell the pumps. Finally they developed huge advertising campaigns to convince farmers to buy the pumps. They even wrote a Bollywood movie that was shown to millions of people and that featured the pump in song and dance.
All this took a number of years of course, but according to Dr. Polak, well over a million of these pumps have been sold and over 17 million people have use the income earned to raise themselves out of the dollar a day poverty. At each step of the process, from manufacturing to distribution to sales to final use each person makes a small profit, and so the effect is multiplied many times. At this point the process is self sustaining and doesn't rely on any outside aid or help.
Dr Polak cited several other examples of projects that have been successful or are being developed. It was interesting that the audience was full of young people, engineering and architecture students and others interested in design. They were captivated by his talk and he encouraged them to keep thinking of ideas and gave examples of areas that they could work on.
One idea he demonstrated that struck me especially was a precess called “electrochlorination”. It's a method of passing low voltage electric current through salt water (sodium chloride) to produce chlorine that can be used to make drinking water safe. His idea is to install small water purification systems in village stores that can then sell inexpensive safe drinking water to community members. Again, the manufacturers of these simple systems makes money selling them to the stores and the stores make money selling the water to the community and the community members save money by buying cheap safe water.
In my mind I compared his idea to a system I saw in Mexico City last month. The Mexican NGO organization Amextra built a water kiosk to sell safe water to local people. They purchased a very expensive, complicated water purification system that used reverse osmosis filters and UV light sterilization. It is very similar to high tech systems I used in medical laboratories here in the U.S., and probably cost $10,000 to build. It also requires expensive maintenance and testing and highly trained people to run it. I don't think Amextra ever intends to break even or make money on the system, its probably more of a local service to the community.
Dr. Polak has several different organizations and books to further his work. In addition to his book “Out of Poverty ...”, there is a book of photos and project ideas entitled “Design for the Other 90%” that is for sale at Mercy Corps. Also he is has a website that has information about his work:
www.paulpolak.com