What does it mean to Uplift and Empower?
Uplift and Empower is a guide to understanding extreme poverty and poverty alleviation for people who have never considered the topics. The title of the book is a hint about its content. It shifts the focus from paternalism to partnership. Rather than assuming that people from high-income countries need to save the poor, Uplift and Empower encourages a new mindset: helping people save themselves.
When given the right opportunities and resources, everyone is capable of improving their circumstances. The goal of the book is to encourage people to learn more about extreme poverty so that they can uplift and empower others.
What is the story behind the book cover?
Listen to some of the book’s main ideas in these videos.
Table of Contents
Part One:
History and Context
Where We Are
A War, A Plan, and a Not-so-silver Bullet
What is Poverty?
The Promise of Productivity: Industrial Revolution
A Tale of Two Nations: Richland versus Poorland
How You Give Matters
Part Two:
Unpacking The Problem
Poverty Mindset
Who Runs The World?
People Problems
Case Study: China
Case Study: Liberia
Part Three:
Solutions
A House Built on a Rock
Taking Care of Business
Don’t Eat the Rich. Feed Them.
Part Four:
The Last Lap
Hello, My Name is Robin.
What’s Next? You Decide.
It all began with a phone call.
Before her fourth year of college, Danielle had never seriously considered poverty or poverty alleviation beyond reading a few books that briefly touched on the subjects. It took a phone call from a professor at Georgetown University to encourage her to write a book and consider big questions and social problems on her mind.
She decided to explore extreme poverty. She wanted to understand poverty alleviation’s past, present, and future. She couldn’t understand how, in a world with such large amounts of wealth, there was still poverty.
The result of her exploration was Uplift and Empower.
To learn more about Danielle, you can read her bio on the “About The Author” page.