Home grown hope: Small steps to ending poverty

As I think of our domestic situation on this International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, I recognize that we are a deeply fortunate people. For all the problems and concerns we face in our daily lives, for all of our worries over jobs, the housing market and our children's future, we are largely spared worry over abject poverty. Our communities certainly include poor people, but we have few who are abjectly poor.

Look around the world, though, and you'll find that the problems of abject poverty are still very real. Hundreds of millions of people are living on just over a dollar a day. Is it realistic to imagine that there's a way — to use a popular slogan — to "make poverty history" for these people? Or is poverty one of those intractable human conditions, as inevitable as taxes and death?

Ten years ago, government leaders met at the United Nations and pledged, among other things, to cut the proportion of people living on a dollar a day in half by 2015. This is the first of eight "Millennium Development Goals," and the good news is that progress has been made reducing poverty, particularly in eastern and southeastern Asia.

But poverty rates remain stubbornly high in sub-Saharan Africa. Why is Africa lagging? An important part of the answer is that African governments make it difficult for millions of small-scale African entrepreneurs to create, invest in and grow their businesses. Their personal safety is not ensured, and they can't always count on keeping what they earn. And that's a problem because these hardworking men and women are the real key to poverty alleviation in Africa. Here are just two examples.

Michael Jwambi was born in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa during the apartheid era. Like many young black men at that time, he moved, illegally, to the city in search of opportunity. He found opportunity as a gardener and eventually got a job driving buses. Sadly, a serious bus accident resulted in the loss of his left leg.

Undeterred, Michael began to work in the back office of the bus company. He saved money, and he and his wife opened a small grocery store, called a Spaza Shop, in his township. Michael and his wife were thrifty and good managers, and the shop was a success, but this was during the early '90s, when township violence in South Africa was pervasive. Their store, which was also their home, was attacked and burned to the ground by criminals. Everyone in Michael's family was killed except for him.