The 40th Open Forum on Poverty will be hosted by CEPA on Wednesday the 19th May 2010 at 4.30 pm at the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), 29, Gregory’s Road, Colombo 07.
This open forum will feature two presentations by Dr. Renuka Jayathissa, Head, Department of Nutrition, Medical Research Institute and Dr. Moazzem Hossain, Chief, Health and Nutrition Section, UNICEF Sri Lanka. The presentations will be facilitated by Dr. Amala de Silva, Department of Economics, University of Colombo and discussed by Dr. Loyd Fernando, Program Director, Distance Learning, Postgraduate Institute of Management of the Sri Jayewardenapura University.
The 38th Open Forum on Poverty was hosted by CEPA on Tuesday the 28th July 2009 at 4.30 pm at the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), 29, Gregory’s Road, Colombo 07. This open forum featured a presentation entitled Rethinking Urban Poverty: Lessons from Philadelphia for South Asian Cities by Prof. Lakshman Yapa, Professor of Geography at the Pennsylvania State University. The presentation was discussed by CEPA’s senior researcher Ms. Neranjana Gunetilleke.
Rethinking Urban Poverty: Lessons from Philadelphia for South Asian Cities
By Dr. Lakshman Yapa
People are said to be poor when they do not have sufficient income to meet their routine basic needs in food, health care, clothing, shelter, and so on. The conventional answer to the problem is to expand the economy, create more jobs, and increase incomes. But this solution has not worked well even in the US, the greatest wealth producing engine ever created in human history. More than one in every ten people in the US is deemed officially poor. If wealth production is the answer to poverty then how much more wealth should the US produce? And how much more wealth needs to be produced in countries such as India and Sri Lanka.
I will argue that economic development cannot eradicate poverty because development is one of the principal drivers that perpetuate poverty. Economic development, particularly of the capitalist kind, the dominant model running the global economy today, cannot and will not eradicate poverty in the US or elsewhere. For the last ten years I have sought answers to reducing urban poverty in the US through an initiative titled, “Rethinking Urban Poverty: The Philadelphia Field Project.” This is a service learning course directed by me and offered through the Pennsylvania State University in the US www.philadelphiafieldproject.org. Also see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc3bq_wjGSs.
Instead of asking why poor people do not have enough money we ask the direct question as to why some people do not have access to good health, adequate food, satisfactory housing, and so on. Remarkably the answers we get to these questions are very different from those we get from using more conventional approaches. We address poverty through a concept called “the household economy” by contrasting it to the way the dominant corporate economy works. There are three key elements to the household economy approach to poverty: first, we try to improve directly the quality of life of the poor; second, by looking at the details of the different household sectors we try to reduce the cost of living (thus increasing effective income), and third, we try to create a modest number of jobs that respond directly to the needs of the household economy. I will draw on a recent visit to Daravi, one of the largest slums in Mumbai, India to look at the relevance of the Philadelphia Field Project approach to urban poverty in South Asia.