Creating opportunities for the very poor is not enough
If we want people to take responsibility for their own progress, we must first help them believe that they can. (from Nurturing Progress in Marginalized Communities at the Evolutionize It blog.) I've had a series of conversations in recent months, with a group of displaced Burmese people who live at a garbage dump on the Thai side of the border with Myanmar, in Mae Sot. You can read about them at the new Pigletsforprogress website, which I've just set up to help launch a crowdfunding campaign that will buy the trash dump community families some piglets to raise, if successful. Details (and a bit of me) in the campaign video below: Piglets were not my idea, and I've really not got the first clue about raising pigs, or whether they can really be successful as a poverty alleviation tool. More than half of families living there already raise pigs, so this is not a new idea coming in from outside. For me, the point is that the community came up with the idea b...