Multiply Justice

How do you overcome poverty? This guy makes toys

Owen Strachan posts at thoughtlife about how the workings of the free market hold much greater potential for positive long-term improvement in the lives of people in poverty.

In Honduras, where 64% of the population lives below the poverty line, a for-profit business, Tegu Toys, is improving the quality of its employees’ lives, creating more jobs as it grows, and giving families a vision of a new and better future.

Chris Haughey, co-founder of the company, says the real solution to poverty is to launch many small engines of economic growth that affect not just a few people for a little while, but entire communities — with the potential to permanently change an entire society for the better.

“You think the solution to poverty is more aid or more charitable giving, but those are only short-term, stopgap solutions. If you care about the poor, then you are going to seek out ways to create new economic opportunities for them,” Haughey says in the 3-minute video posted at the site. “… What we really need to address issues of poverty is economic growth through for-profit mechanisms that create sustainable opportunities for people.”

Strachan points out that “Bono (who famously campaigned for debt forgiveness) recently acknowledged this” and notes a Yale University study that showed “the stunning effects of the free market upon the global populace.”

Read the full text of Strachan’s post and watch the inspiring video by clicking here.
Learn more about Tegu Toys by clicking here.