Like navigation markings in unknown waters, definitions of poverty need to be distinctive and unambiguous. A definition that is not precise is as bad as no definition at all.

In a bird's eye view you tend to survey everything and decide on a particular point, then you swoop down and pick it up. In a worms eye view you don't have that advantage of looking at everything.

I was trained to become an economist and I finished my work and I was teaching and did my PhD so I thought I did that. I prepared myself for that kind of road. But then I realized that I had not learned enough to solve the problem of poverty. So I distanced myself from the things that I learned and tried to learn anew about people.

We have to get out of this mindset that the rich will do the business and the poor will have the charity.

The only place where poverty should be is in museums.

I made a list of people who needed just a little bit of money. And when the list was complete, there were 42 names. The total amount of money they needed was $27. I was shocked.

But we have created a society that does not allow opportunities for those people to take care of themselves because we have denied them those opportunities.