Grameen Bank has loaned US$6.38 billion to 7.4 million very poor borrowers, and International Development Enterprises (IDE) has helped three million very poor small-holder families increase their net income by $288 million per year by creating affordable irrigation tools and markets. But approximately one billion people in the world survive on less than $1 a day, and over 2.4 billion live on less than $2. So, what Grameen Bank and IDE have done to improve the lives of some 10 million very poor families amounts to nothing more than a drop in the bucket.

Many efforts to bring life-changing technologies to poor people are destined to have limited impact, because those projects aren’t grounded in poor people’s real life needs, aren’t financially sustainable, and don’t address the biggest, most important issues that poor people struggle with every day.