Our Mission -- Ending Extreme Poverty in Our Lifetime

We've been working hard updating the mission of The Anti-Poverty Campaign and wanted to post it here. Feedback is most welcome!

The Mission of The Anti-Poverty Campaign

Nearly three billion inhabitants of our world live in extreme poverty--under $2 per day. It is the mission of The Anti-Poverty Campaign to reduce this figure on an absolute basis by half by 2025.

This goal can only be reached by increasing standards of living and encouraging sustainable economic development in the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin/South America. How to do this, however, is the real question.

Our strategy for accomplishing our mission is broken into seven categories.

1. Education: Working toward achieving universal primary education and universal literacy.
2. Health: Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, other major diseases, and infant mortality;
3. Corruption; Fighting corruption in both public and private sectors;
4. Legal Systems: Establishing proper regulatory frameworks, property laws, and financial institutions requisite for capital markets;
5. Barriers to Enterprise Creation: Making entrepreneurship and enterprise development possible for every person in every country;
6. Fair Free Trade: Working toward establishing fair free trade by reducing and eventually removing agricultural subsidies and opening up developed country markets to developing country-produced goods while at the same time working to improve working conditions in developing nations.
7. Technological Access: Improving access to global knowledge by increasing access to computers, the Internet, and broadband in developing countries.

We want to give the three billion persons who live on under $2 per day the chance and ability to make something of themselves, create a life free of poverty, and provide value to society. Presently, breaking out of poverty, starting an enterprise, or significantly improving one's socioeconomic status is not possible for the majority of persons in the world. In the way is corruption in government and deficiencies in business and social infrastructure, a lack of proper legal frameworks, a lack of enterprise creation education for those at the lower socioeconomic ends of society, subsidies that misallocate production in developed nations, and devastating health pandemics like HIV/AIDS and Malaria that steal hundreds of thousand of lives each and every year.

The Beliefs of The Anti-Poverty Campaign

The Beliefs of The Anti-Poverty Campaign

Underpinning our mission are twelve fundamental beliefs that shape our philosophy and our plan of attack for reducing poverty.

1. We believe that competitive market economies, free from collusion and corruption, are essential to creating an incentive to produce and are essential to establishing properly allocating price levels and thus are essential to a high standard of living.
2. We believe in promoting the principles of liberalism. We believe in a republic and democratic system of government, religious freedom, equal opportunity, and the promotion of individual initiative.
3. We believe that the creative potential of the human race is great and that by providing the three key ingredients of good health, good education, and economic opportunity to an individual he or she will more often than not become a productive individual that adds value to a society.
4. We believe there is a distinct and important role, though limited, for government, especially in the early stages of a country's development.
5. We believe in promoting market-based solutions to problems wherever possible, though we understand that the role of government can often be important in improving the state of its citizens.
6. We believe that the majority of the world's poor do not resent the developed world, but rather resent not having a pathway to join the developed world themselves.
7. We believe economics is not a net sum zero game and that by finding ways to complete economic tasks more efficiently, either through specialization, trade, or technological progress, more wealth can be created than the amount that exists today.
8. We believe that free trade in goods markets is nearly always a net positive for a society as long as proper transition assistance is provided to the workers who are affected negatively by the opening of markets.
9. We believe that free trade in capital markets can sometimes be good and sometimes be bad, especially if the proper regulatory frameworks and financial institutions have yet to be put in place in a country.
10. We believe that breaking out of poverty, becoming an entrepreneur, or significantly improving one's socio-economic status is not currently possible for the majority of the world's population and that it should be possible for everyone.
11. We believe that the ability to be a social or business entrepreneur should be made available to every human from every country.
12. We believe the major methods by which we can achieve significant reductions in extreme poverty are working toward improving education, improving health and access to vaccinations and essential vitamins, working to reducing corruption in both the public and private sector, establishing proper legal systems, removing barriers to enterprise creation, expanding use of microenterprise and microfinance initiatives, reducing developed country agricultural subsidies, increasing market access for developing country goods, and improving access to technology.
13. We believe that all humans have equal inherent value.
    

Want to join us? If you'd like to be able to contribute to The Anti-Poverty Campaign blog as a writer just email allisr [at] broadwick.com and we'll add you as a member.

Who We Are

Ryan P. Allis, Executive Director
Ryan Allis, 22, is the Founder and Executive Director of the Anti-Poverty Campaign. Ryan is also the CEO of Broadwick Corp., providers of the blogging and email marketing software iContact. As CEO he's managed the company from an entrepreneurial start-up in July 2003 to 55 employees over 10500 customers, and more than $6 million in annual sales.

Ryan is also the author of the book Zero to One Million: How to Build a Company to $1 Million in Sales, and was named by BusinessWeek in 2005 as one of the "Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25."

Ryan serves as Chairman of the Carolina Entrepreneurship Club, is a member of the Raleigh-Durham Chapter of the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization.

Ryan founded the Anti-Poverty Campaign in 2005 to work to reduce poverty in developing nations by fighting corruption, promoting technology use, expanding microenterprise and microfinance efforts, and instituting improved education, health care, and financial systems. Ryan is presently on leave from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is a senior economics major and a Blanchard Scholar.

> Learn more at ryanallis.com

Other contributors include:
Jennifer Monroe, was blogging from Mali and Uganda, now from Chapel Hill
Joel Thomas, was blogging from Argentina, now from Chapel Hill
Erin Mulfinger, blogging from Guatemala
Carlos Toriello - blogging from Guatemala
Maggie Salinger - blogging from Uganda
Joan Moina - blogging from Nairobi, Kenya
Moffat Thomas - blogging from Gabarone, Botswana

Want to join the APC team? Email ryan [at] icontact.com and we'll add you as an authorized contributor.