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About the Author
Paul Polak
In 1981 Paul Polak founded International Development Enterprises (IDE), the non-profit organization he currently heads as president. Through his work with IDE, he has helped over 17 million impoverished farmers in developing countries to escape the cycle of subsistence poverty. IDE makes innovative, low-cost water-resource technologies accessible to the world’s poorest farmers, enabling them to access and control water, increase and diversify agricultural production, create new wealth, and improve their families’ quality of life. What makes Polak’s work unique is the market-based approach that he brings to poverty alleviation—an approach based on his belief that the rural poor are natural entrepreneurs who, if given the opportunity, will invest their own limited resources to ensure their families’ security and well-being.
Polak’s and IDE’s achievements have been recognized the Scientific American Top Fifty award for agriculture policy (2003), the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award (2004), and the Tech Museum award for the design of IDE’s low-cost drip irrigation system (2004). Articles about IDE and Polak have appeared in National Geographic, Harpers, Forbes, and Scientific American. Polak gives frequent talks and presentations at leading universities like Stanford and MIT, as well as academic and professional conferences like the 2006 International Symposium on Groundwater Sustainability (ISGWAS), the Annual Meeting of the National Collegiate Innovators and Inventors Association (NCIIA), the 2006 Aspen Design Summit, and the 2007 Pop!Tech Conference.
Polak received his M.D. from the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada in 1958, and his certification from the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry in 1978.
To learn more about Paul and his work at IDE, please visit http://www.ide-international.org/.
Please visit Paul's Out of Poverty website http://www.paulpolak.com.
