My last word #1:
As someone who has been in the crosshairs of ultra poverty my whole life, and as someone who has seen countless antipoverty interventions come and go, I firmly believe:
A strict adherence to top-bottom approaches simply won’t end global poverty. The only way global extreme poverty can end, is by putting the world’s ultra poor, i.e., those of us at the very bottom of the pyramid, directly at the helm.
Call it a bottom-up approach.
Everything else is only a timepass, and won’t end global poverty, ever.
My last word #2:
If humanity seriously wants to end global poverty once and for all, a poor people-led approach, or a bottom-up approach to ending extreme poverty, is the sole thing that will ever, ever end global poverty.
Poor people-led, grassroots change, is the only change that will ever last, long after every other goodwiller has left.
My last word #3:
In a place like ours, i.e., Kamuli & Buyende, in eastern Uganda, a really impoverished remote rural region that stretches over 3,300 sq km, it is very hard to find anything that is happening to end extreme poverty, let alone as a result of the global fight against poverty.
The extreme poor, meanwhile, permanently live in these impoverished communities, and are therefore best placed to end extreme poverty with continuity, if only they were at the helm, or if they were accorded the means to take charge of events.
Problem is:
Humanity still insists that the world’s ultra poor must instead sit and wait for the right people, or the most legit people, to come and move them from poverty. For this reason, humanity really is very opposed to the idea of directly supporting the extreme poor, in the global south.
The day humanity will find the BALLS to put aside its hidden fears about the world’s ultra poor, and thus start directly supporting the people who themselves live on < $1.9 a day in the global south, is the day global poverty will end.
My last word #4:
To be fair, top-bottom approaches have had more than a good run.
This has been the default way of ending global extreme poverty since the dawn of time, and it just hasn’t worked.
The only thing this has accomplished, is that it has helped keep the world’s ultra poor on the sidelines of the global fight against poverty.
More specifically, it has only helped seal the fate of those of us at the very bottom of the pyramid. And it has only helped leave people like us on the extreme edge of humanity.
My last word #5:
If anything, a final end to global poverty is already long overdue.
The world has already spent more than enough time trying to end global extreme poverty, with exactly the same approaches, and with exactly the same results.
It is time for humanity to a) accept that staying the course simply won’t work, and b) realize the need to put the ultra poor directly at the helm.
Short of this, we will continue having a) a world where all existing approaches to ending global poverty are exclusively top-bottom, and largely short-lived, and b) a world where billions continue to be spent every year, in the name of ending global poverty, in a way that doesn’t touch the ultra poor in any way.
My last word #6:
Humanity. What a species!
They are the only creation who will be very avid lovers of wildlife, while at the same time keen enough to bring a gun to kill that wildlife, calling themselves trophy hunters.
Similarly:
They are the only creation who will set very positive goals for human progress, such as the UN Global Goals, and then almost deliberately try to ensure these goals flounder — by finding every possible reason to shun any direct connection with those living in ultra poverty.
My last word #7: