Can Businesses Help Solve the Problems of Poverty?

Living and working in Indonesia during the early 90's was an eye opener for me. Although I had previously come across poor families 'down the street', I had never previously been confronted with so much poverty until I saw it face to face in South East Asia. I couldn't comprehend how a family could be so destitute and desperate that they would break the legs of one of their children so that he/ she would be able to bring in money for the family by begging on the streets in between cars, pushing themselves along on a skateboard. It was during that time that I had the privilege to be leading a project which was working with poor landless communities in three villages on Lombok, Eastern Indonesia. I came to appreciate the dignity that even poor people hold on to, and to understand that if you give poor people the power to help themselves, they can lift themselves out of poverty.