We are excited to announce the Acton Institute will be hosting our first ever Poverty Cure Summit November 18-19, 2020, and we invite you to participate. For the past 30 years, the Acton Institute has been the foremost authority on providing a moral defense of free enterprise and individual liberty as ways to lift people out of poverty worldwide. This is truly vital work considering the misconceptions regarding how to best help those dealing with financial instability.
And, sadly, the primary intervention strategies involve various forms of charity and aid, but poverty is not solved by generosity. Poverty does not end because people are charitable.
We are called to care for and serve the poor. Yet for many of us with a heart for the poor, the statistics are overwhelming. Nearly one billion people live on less than $1.90 a day. Every year, millions die from AIDS, malaria and other preventable diseases. Tens of millions lack clean water and go to bed hungry.
Despite the good intentions of many charitable institutions, we often fail to see lasting change because we don’t ground the battle against local and global poverty in a proper understanding of the human person and society. We need to encourage solutions that foster opportunity and unleash the entrepreneurial spirit that already fills poverty-stricken areas of the developed and developing world.
Our vision is a future in which people find their path out of poverty through satisfying and fruitful work. This is accomplished through adherence to the economic foundations that allow for human flourishing, which include rule of law, private property, free association and free exchange, strong churches and communities and a culture of trust.
Without the presence of these foundations, individuals will be unable to rise out of poverty and into satisfying and fruitful work.
By leveraging our successful new high-impact online learning platform, we will have more than a dozen panel discussions with experts in economics, law, prison reform, entrepreneurship and community development to share their experiences and insights on how we can effectively alleviate poverty. Through effective moderation, panel discussions will trace ideas back to foundational principles of anthropology, politics, natural law and economics and thereby illustrate how we can reduce poverty and promote human flourishing.
Additionally, we will have pre-recorded “Lectures-in-a-Box” that provide foundational talks on each subject. Topics will include (1) the legacy and future of capitalism, (2) the impact of philanthropy and (3) achieving abundance through entrepreneurship.
We are hosting debates on the topics of universal basic income, technology and work, and how faulty systems (such as mass incarceration or socialism) create or exacerbate poverty.
Finally, no conference on poverty would be complete without hearing the voices of the (formerly) poor and learning from the experience of practitioners who have had a long-run impact on improving people’s lives.
