“Walls of Poverty”: Executive Director Gabrielle Harris speaks at TEDx Great Wall Beijing

“… the options you could pick up in those places, were not the same as those for us living in the West, they were not choices around “Which event to go to in the evening” or “Which brand of handbag to match to your mini-skirt”, but choices more like: “Which of my children shall I feed today”, or, “Which sick member of my family will get medicine today?” It was a world of impossible, but very simple questions."

- Gabrielle Harris, May 20, 2010 TEDx Presentation

On May 20th, Gabrielle was invited to speak at the TEDx Great Wall Beijing. TEDx events are independent external conferences inspired by international conference TED in the USA. The theme of the session held at the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall, was “World without Walls”. Gabrielle’s own speech focused on the “Walls of Poverty”.

PlaNet Finance China’s mission is to “Accelerate poverty alleviation through support to the microfinance sector”. In order to do this, we must first understand what poverty is, and what the barriers to poverty reduction are. This event inspired all of us at the PFC office to define and consider what the walls surrounding poverty were, and in effect what we were working to achieve.

In her speech, Gabrielle highlighted 5 major walls around poverty, specifically in the context of China. They are:

1.  Illiteracy: China’ current compulsory education plan did not take into effect until 2005. As such, much of China’s middle-aged mid-30’s population is illiterate
2. Lack of information: Many live in the “what you see is what you know” world which hinders change and are not conducive for innovative thinking
3. Cashless in a world with no credit: In rural areas of China where the local economy depends heavily on agriculture, in which cash income is cyclical, bartering is still often adopted. While sufficient for day-to-day life, problems arise when emergencies come up that require cash money.
4. Sense of collective organization is weak: fear of competition diminishes buyers leverage as producers compete with one another resulting in a lose-lose situation instead of working collectively and helping one another get stronger.
5. Soil degradation and ecosystem breakdown: marginalized people live in the least productive landscapes, where their efforts to survive degrade soils and remaining vegetation even further.

For more details and the full version of Gabrielle presentation, please download the following document: