Students, academics and practitioners met Thursday and Friday, March 9-10, 2006 to discuss how to solve worldwide poverty at the ninth annual Economic Self-Reliance Conference.

“It’s the family that has to get out of poverty,” said John Hatch, the creator of village banking. “It’s what the church has been advocating for forever. It’s what the Center [for Economic Self-Reliance] has been advocating for forever.”

Here policy experts and representatives of organizations, some of which provide loans to millions of people, shared their ideas on building economically self-reliant families, which was the theme of the conference.

“Never underestimate the ability of the poor,” Hatch said. “With the right opportunity, they have the power to reinvent themselves and get out of poverty.”

Hatch cautioned the older heads of organizations to never underestimate the power of the youth, who he believes will be the generation to end poverty. He said it is a “sacred obligation” to take seriously the young who want to make a difference, but after advising them, he recommends getting out of the way.

Microcredit is one of the revolutionary methods to help the poor become self-sufficient. It’s the idea of giving loans to the poorest of the poor—those who don’t have access to traditional banks. With these loans people can start a small business and gradually escape the insecurity of not being able to provide for their family’s needs.

“There are millions of people losing their livelihood because they can’t afford something that costs ten dollars at Walgreens,” said Jordan Kassalow, co-founder of Scojo Vision, a company which donates 5 percent of its profits to provide cheap reading glasses to poor people.

Besides providing the glasses, the Scojo foundation also trains people and gives them a job to sell the product. Helping the poor by giving them access to computers and other technology was another idea of the conference, talked about by Microsoft leader Kevin Johnson.