Slum of Hope and Entrepreneurial Creativity

Recent field trips to urban slums in Malaysia really make me pondering the effectiveness of existing solutions in assisting the poor. From various profiles of poor families that I have interaction with, it is apparent that they know limited welfare will not reach every family nor will it create systemic socio-economic improvement. They would welcome it but they rarely hope for it, what they absolutely certain of is the significance of generating self-sustainable income on their own. Do we really need a grand program to assist them with long period of planning and inaction? What I see is failure to truly leverage on their innate surviving skills and entrepreneurial potential.

Take for example, a 67-year-old lady who pedals her rusty bicycle daily to collect recyclable trash for sales, and grows vegetable in the backyard of her dilapidated shelter to supplement her meager monthly income of less than USD30. Or a housewife of 5 children with absolutely no business acumen sets up a makeshift stall to sell snacks in front of her squatter house, hoping to support her struggling husband whom as a sole breadwinner although snacks mostly end up in the stomachs of her young children. There are other accounts like a manual labor who searches and sells metal scraps and disposed cardboxes daily for supplementary income to support his young family; or a frail elderly lady living on limited welfare with a body wrecked by car crash but still possesses tremendous passion and energy to plant flowers and herbs, vibrating some lively greens and colors in a dilapidated slum with only trash in sight and smell. But she would rather to give them away than to sell because she is ‘terrified’ of doing small-scale business on her own.

Each of them has unique struggle and sad story to tell, but the beauty is what I found in each of them with dignity intact and of course entrepreneurial potential across differing abilities, backgrounds, genders and ages. Put aside the judgment that they indeed do look forward to certain forms of aids, we need to understand their circumstances, open-ended promises of aids by state officials, portrayal as recipients by the society and the undeniable fact that they were never given a chance to show their entrepreneurial abilities.

Since assistance to the poor is being welfare and charity driven in the country, entrepreneurial approach had never truly thrived on significant scale. However I think we should not overlook the potential of smaller and adaptable entrepreneurial solution to assist poor communities. It makes more sense than to plan after large-scale budget, ambitious programs untested in reality that claim to create profound change. Very often than not, these programs are mired in implementation obstacles, losing track of accountability and failing to reach intended targets over time. Reverse the scale, start with community-based solution that channels assistance directly to the poor, it has been proven that a small amount of loan along with basic business training can achieve more than imposing grand programs that lacks practicality. I do not have any qualm that those families I met will benefit from it. A simple but effective solution exists right in front of us when we listen and observe more what the poor can do and leverage on their unique entrepreneurial abilities, help them to adapt gradually and be better in what they do, but not to demand radical adjustment and unrealistic changes as if we own the solution.

Social impact and scale can not be reached simply because we have larger programs. The value of gradual replication in different communities and scaling through adaptation and learning cannot be ignored. I believe systemic change must include tangible opportunities for the poor to show their entrepreneurial potential and to be accounted for improving their own quality of life.