📈 Maintaining Progress with Poverty Reduction

Rwanda, 2023: Alphonsine, Berancille and Pascasie have successfully started a kiosk in their village with the help of Village Enterprise.

Over the last 15 years, 25 countries have halved their total population living in poverty.

WHAT THIS MEANS: This significant progress goes to show that we can drastically reduce extreme poverty through strategic policies and high-impact interventions. Yet, despite these encouraging gains, structural inequities still threaten to leave the poorest communities behind. That’s why it’s vital to support organizations that promote equity in the global effort to eradicate poverty and ensure that everyone benefits from the progress.

Half of the people living in poverty globally are children under 18. Disadvantage at an early age often creates further disparities later in life and can ultimately lead to intergenerational poverty. One of the key drivers of future disadvantage is malnutrition early in life, as it can prevent full cognitive and physical development. Sanku - Project Healthy Children works to provide children everywhere with the simple, inexpensive, basic nutritional support they require to survive and thrive.

84% of people suffering from extreme poverty live in rural areas. Without access to opportunities for economic progress, those living in rural areas fall further behind their urban peers. Village Enterprise equips the extreme poor in Africa with resources to start sustainable businesses through a four-part program: entrepreneurship training, cash grants, business mentoring, and savings groups.

When concentrated in specific regions, poverty creates overlapping deprivations across health, education, and standard of living. This particularly affects women and girls in rural and remote areas in South Asia, with a combination of cultural norms and lack of alternative labour opportunities often keeping women economically dependent on their fathers or husbands. To revert this trend, Educate Girls works in the most remote communities in India to address deep-seated gender biases, provide girls with quality education, and help them build a brighter future.

The theme of this year’s Poverty Eradication Day is “Decent Work and Social Protection: Putting dignity in practice for all.” One organization that embodies these principles in action is GiveDirectly. Their remarkable work in providing individuals with direct cash transfers has proven to be one of the most impactful approaches to address both the critical issues of social protection and empowering individuals with the dignity and freedom to shape their own lives.

Daniel is an insightful, no-nonsense conversational partner, so be ready for some frank talk in these musings: A former Microsoft executive who worked closely with Bill Gates and later founded several highly successful venture capital funds, Daniel has worked and lived among high-powered, monied individuals. He has been struck by how “old rich, white men” do not want to part with their money, while young tech entrepreneurs, who don’t feel as entitled to their wealth, are often much more generous.