MANILA, Philippines - A new book hot off the press takes a fresh look at poverty, and why it persists in spite of numerous organizations and huge amounts of money for projects designed to fight it. In Reinventing Social Technologies for Developing Countries: Behavioral Approach to Fighting Poverty in the 21st Century, author Dr. Cesar M. Mercado says that poverty is a product of civilization. Before civilization came, equity was the rule of the game among tribal societies.
UP alumnus Mercado, president and CEO of the Development Center for Asia Africa Pacific (DCAAP), a Manila-based international training and consultancy NGO specializing in human development, wrote this provocative, 150-page book.
With a foreword by UP president Dr. Emerlinda Roman, the book theorizes that poverty results when people became materialistic and possessive of others’ resources to show off their power and wealth. Too much emphasis on the economic approach to fight poverty has made the problem worse. The best books on poverty since 1970 to the present suggest that the use of a behavioral approach could moderate the impact of the economic approach.
The economic approach follows the adage “Give a man a fish and he will live for a day.” The behavioral approach adheres to the saying: “Teach a man how to fish and he will live for a lifetime.” In practice, the economic approach starts by giving capital to the poor before training them. The behavioral approach gives the poor training before capital.
The book was largely based on the direct field experiences and lessons learned by Mercado as an international planner/programmer and monitoring/evaluation specialist of UNDP for 10 years in some 16 countries in Asia and the Pacific. He checked his broad and deep field observations with feedback from over 1,500 training participants, who represented over 230 development organizations spread across 43 countries in Asia, Africa and the Pacific.
DCAAP will initially distribute the book this month. For inquiries, call 920-6282, 926-3244, or e-mail dcaap@pacific.net.ph or dcaap@tri-isys.com.