Paul Polak - Work As A Social Entrepreneur

Work As A Social Entrepreneur

After a trip to Bangladesh, Polak was inspired to use the skills he had honed while working with homeless veterans and mentally ill patients in Denver to help serve the 800 million people living on a dollar a day around the world. Employing the same tactics he pioneered as a psychiatrist, Polak spent time “walking with farmers through their one-acre farms and enjoying a cup of tea with their families, sitting on a stool in front of their thatched-roof mud–and–wattle homes.”

Based on extended conversations with more than three thousand small-acreage farmers in developing countries, Polak devised the simple operating principles of the organization he founded, International Development Enterprises (IDE), which has helped more than 15 million people who survive on less than a dollar a day to move out of poverty.

Read more about this topic:  Paul Polak

Famous quotes containing the words work and/or social:

    There are two kinds of talent, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.
    Pearl Bailey (1918–1990)

    ...I discovered that I could take a risk and survive. I could march in Philadelphia. I could go out in the street and be gay even in a dress or a skirt without getting shot. Each victory gave me courage for the next one.
    Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)