Rainer Arnhold Fellows

Millions of people stuck in grinding poverty have the entrepreneurial drive to work their way out; what they lack are the money-making products to do it. Top-down efforts too often produce tools that don’t work for those they are supposed to help. Debbie Aung Din and Jim Taylor realized that the best way to assess a product’s value is if the poor are willing to buy it. Debbie and Jim have set up a design lab in Myanmar that combines the best ideas the world has to offer with customer feedback at the village level, and they market the resulting products through existing sales channels. They started with a foot-treadle irrigation pump that sells for under $25. The pumps have energized rural villages that have long had little to celebrate, tripling incomes and allowing families to eat better, send their kids to school, and improve their farms. With over 24,000 pumps in use, IDE Myanmar is developing affordable new products like household lights, water storage and high yielding seeds. Both the products and the process that creates them can scale-up and have the potential to bring millions of families out of extreme poverty.