Reaching out to the Poor

This book is about the poor and the constraints of social and economic relationships within which they are trapped. Such constraints have diminished their social and political capacity to be able to escape from poverty. In their case, therefore, neither the provisions of public policy nor specific development stimulus are enough. Initially, and for a limited period, what they need are socially concerned individuals and organizations to mobilise them and target them for development. In the long run, however, their self-development can come only through their own self-involvement. As such this book concentrates on the poor, and the actual nature of their disadvantages, rather than on the abstract notions of poverty.