learning to read Out of Poverty

A friend recently recommended John Stackhouse's Out of Poverty And Into Something More Comfortable to me. Reading it reminds me how tough it is to take real knowledge, not just opinions, from a narrative about global issues. After years in the field as a writer, Stackhouse is of the mindset that big, overly-ambitious, top-level aid is less effective than supporting grassroots micro-initiatives - a mindset that I'm inclined to strongly agree with. Policy-makers, and those who influence them, may control vast flows of a kind of resource, money or food, but no one in a seat of power has more influence over human ingenuity than small people working together in their area of understanding. Small people delivering on good ideas have always had the biggest impact. (Sometimes small people find themselves in big positions.)

And yet at the same time, the statistician in me asks what truth am I finding in these pages? When you read a book like this, you're not just reading the ideas of one person and his friends, editors, and publisher. At least I hope not. I think you're reading this book because hundreds of small but knowledgeable people in the academic and international development field have read this book too and given it their approval to shape the minds of small, less knowledgeable people like me about how development works. I'm reading stories that have been tested in a peer-review process, and then by thousands of readers with whom this book resonates. So I guess I can relax and just enjoy the stories, comfortable with a medium where there are few figures and quantifiable data.

If there's one thing I feel comfortable taking from this book, it's that no matter how small and insignificant a person may be perceived to be, we're still in a position of great power in the world we move.