CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL CONSTRUCT

       To establish a societal approach to maximize the personal potential of the nation’s citizenry that begins with changing the way the country thinks about and addresses poverty.

This effort seeks to create urgency in society to do the work of this recalibration, such that it views eliminating poverty as:

Although a general direction is alluded to in the mission statement, it intentionally leaves us with the question: “If we change the way this country thinks about and addresses poverty, what specifically are we changing from and what do we want to change to?” The answer to this question is far too complex for anyone to claim they know what it is. After all, there is a broad range of ways we as a society think about poverty and an even broader range of ways we are attempting to address it. That is precisely the point; since such a range exists, the results of our collective energy and resources have worked at cross-purposes, resulting in inertia rather than in progress in any one direction.

The point of this initiative is not to attempt to answer this question, it is to have this country engage in a dialog about what it wants for its own future, what the stakes are if it does nothing and poverty continues to rise and the conditions of poverty spread, what it values for its residents, and whether those values are representative of the values put forth in the founding documents of this country. The remaining components of this theoretical construct attempt to lay out a foundation upon which this dialog, future strategies, and ultimately, ‘the answer’ can be built. There are obviously many, many details and challenges to work out, but the spirit behind this initiative is that they cannot be worked out without having the dialog.

If this effort is successful over the long-term, national prosperity will be maximized and fewer people will live impoverished lives because:

    The vision statement provides the ultimate goal of this work—the desired future state. Since this construct serves as a foundation for future work, each one of the statements above serve as placeholders for each sector to develop its own change strategies aligned with the principles suggested on the next page. The vision embodies the principle that every sector of society has a role to play, which differs from our current construct which generally holds that either the individual or the government has exclusive responsibility for addressing poverty.

Imperatives

Among other reasons, we engage in this work because:

       The imperatives provide a small sample of moral, economic, and social reasons why establishing a societal approach to maximizing the personal potential of the nation’s citizenry, starting with changing the way this country thinks about and addresses poverty is worth the effort (see also Chapter 1: The Case for Change). There are obviously many more reasons why such a change is in everyone’s best interest. This initiative encourages every sector of society to think about the reasons why it would be in their specific sector’s best interest to increase national prosperity and reduce the number of people living impoverished lives.
 

Principles

New ways of maximizing personal potential and thinking about and addressing poverty should be built upon the following principles:

1. Shared vision: New ways of building personal capacity and thinking about and addressing poverty are built on a hopeful, shared belief in equal and unalienable individual rights and the profound belief in the human potential of every individual to succeed.  
   
2. Person-centered: Effectively and efficiently assisting individuals in need means that the service delivery structure must focus on the needs of the individual or family, not on the needs of the helping system.  
   
3.  “Poverty” as we know it is only a starting point: Traditional definitions and mental models about poverty (e.g. models based exclusively on income determinants, which suggest poverty as a population) are starting points only.  
   
1. “Poverty” is broader than the amount of income a person makes. Income is only a part of an individual’s ability to make life work and to be a productive member of society. Human potential depends on different types of capital –social, economic, and spiritual.  
   
4. Reciprocal Responsibility: Full and equal responsibility for maximizing personal potential lies with the individual to society and with society to the individual. This means that our strategies must be equally focused on the behavior of society (and it’s institutions) and the behavior of the individual.  
   
5. Consistent with America’s tenet of market solutions: Infrastructures and mechanisms to assist those in need should be developed by tapping into private resources and market solutions. Doing so would geometrically expand the resources and possibilities for maximizing societal capacity.  
   
6. Everybody has a role: Every sector of society (government, private industry, non-profit, communities) has a role in creating a nation of capacity, reciprocal responsibility, prosperity, and opportunity. These roles may or may not be consistent with current roles.  
   
1. The role of systemic interdependence: No one policy, program, community, strategy can create a nation of maximized capacity, prosperity, and opportunity alone. Therefore, each part of the system is dependent on the other for creating that future.  
   
2. The role of individual performance: All parts of the system (read: nation) must fulfill their own obligations toward maximizing potential for capacity, prosperity, and opportunity in order for the whole system to be successful.  
   
7. Change is necessary: We cannot create a nation of reciprocal responsibility, prosperity, and opportunity using these principles without fundamental change occurring in every sector of society.  
   
8. Leveraging resources: We should strive first to make wiser application of existing resources in all sectors of society. Doing so encourages individuals or systems to align and strategically use the resources they have toward the outcome of success, as they have defined it.

The components of this new construct are viewed as preliminary; they are offered as a starting point for a national dialog about how it wants to think about and address poverty and more broadly, maximize the personal potential of every person. The rest is up to the collective whole.