VOA标准英语2008年-Engineer, Inventor, Capitalist Martin Fisher, S

Engineer and inventor Martin Fisher has applied¹ his passion for improving things to the challenge of eliminating poverty in rural Africa. As Maura Farrelly reports, his non-profit organization is transforming the lives of thousands of poor African farmers through a combination of technological² innovation and business development.
　
Martin Fisher

When Martin Fisher completed his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering at the prestigious³ Stanford University in northern California, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. All he knew was that he didn't want to teach or work for the government or oil industry – which is what everyone else who graduated from his program back in 1985 was doing.

Instead, Fisher took a soul-searching trip to Peru and for the first time, really saw what poverty means in a developing country. He recalls, "I started thinking maybe there's something that can be done with engineering and poverty."

He came back to the United States and applied for a Fulbright Fellowship to return to Peru. Because he didn't speak Spanish, he didn't get the fellowship. But the Fulbright committee decided⁴ to send him to Kenya instead. Fisher initially⁵ planned on spending just ten months there. He ended up staying for 17 years.

Lessons from the effort to relieve poverty
　
Martin Fisher, who won the 2008 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability for his work, demonstrates his Super Soaker pump

During his first five years, he worked for a British non-profit agency and, he says, learned a lot about what doesn't work. "One of the things I did was establish a very large rural water program, where we went into villages, and we would build a well and put a pump on it and get nice, clean water. It looks like a great project; everybody celebrates. The trouble is, you come back a couple of years later, the pump is broken down." Although it was a community resource, no one would take the individual responsibility for fixing it. "Africa is literally⁶ littered with tens of thousands of broken-down community water systems."

The conclusion Fisher came to is that charity doesn't work – at least not in circumstances like this. People need to feel a sense of individual ownership over the technology that makes their lives better – and just giving a pump to an entire group of people isn't going to do that.
　
A Kenyan farmer and his wife spray their field

Fisher says he learned another important lesson during his first five years in Kenya. "A poor person's number one need – and in fact their only need – is a way to make more money. If a poor person can make more money, they're no longer poor, they can afford education, they can afford healthcare, they can afford clean water."

And so with those two lessons learned, Martin Fisher and his colleague, Nick Moon, set out in 1991 to found KickStart. It's a non-profit organization that develops agricultural technology that is then bought and sold by entrepreneurs in Kenya and Tanzania.

Providing ingredients for starting a business
　
A young Kenyan boy enjoys pumping water with a Super Money Maker⁷ pump

The organization's biggest success story is something called the Money Maker Pump. It's a human-powered irrigation system that can pull water up from as deep as 7 meters underground – and then irrigate⁸ one hectare of land. There's also something called the Super Money Maker Pump. It's a little more expensive, but it can actually pull water uphill, making it ideal for steeply sloping land where the water source may be at the bottom.

"Eighty percent of the people in Africa are poor, rural farmers," Fisher observes. "And the best business that they can start is to move from subsistence farming – where they basically wait for the rain once a year, or maybe twice a year, and they grow a staple⁹ crop – move away from that to commercial irrigated¹⁰ farming, where suddenly with irrigation, they can grow high-value crops like fruits and vegetables throughout the year and, most importantly, bring them out in the long dry season, when nobody else has any crops, and the prices are very, very high."

The pumps cost around $34 – which is a lot of money for a poor farmer living on just $500 a year. But the typical farmer's income increases to about $1,500 a year after purchasing the pump, and there are also 550 local retailers¹¹ in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mali who are profiting off the sale of these pumps.

Out of poverty, into new possibilities
　
Jane Mathendu bought a KickStart oilseed press in 1996, and now has a successful business that contracts 20 local farmers to grow sunflowers and employs 2 full time workers

Martin Fisher says these farmers and retailers are no longer living just day-to-day, which he says is the definition of being out of poverty. "You're no longer worried about the daily expenses, but you can actually think about the future. So what do people do? They send their kids on to secondary school, on to college. They invest in other businesses; they'll buy a cow and start a small dairy. We've got 10,000 families that have built new houses. People have bought solar panels. And for the first time, like I say, they actually have the options to do those things, and they're literally out of poverty."

Martin Fisher's KickStart program has also developed technologies for low-cost housing construction and cooking-oil manufacturing. All together, 64,000 new businesses have been started in Africa thanks to KickStart, and these businesses generate about $79 million a year in new profits and wages.

 

1 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

2 technological   

adj.技术的；工艺的

参考例句：

• A successful company must keep up with the pace of technological change.一家成功的公司必须得跟上技术变革的步伐。
• Today,the pace of life is increasing with technological advancements.当今， 随着科技进步，生活节奏不断增快。

3 prestigious   

adj.有威望的，有声望的，受尊敬的

参考例句：

• The young man graduated from a prestigious university.这个年轻人毕业于一所名牌大学。
• You may even join a prestigious magazine as a contributing editor.甚至可能会加入一个知名杂志做编辑。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

6 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

7 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

8 irrigate   

vt.灌溉，修水利，冲洗伤口，使潮湿

参考例句：

• The farmer dug several trenches to irrigate the rice fields.这个农民挖了好几条沟以灌溉稻田。
• They have built canals to irrigate the desert.他们建造成水渠以灌溉沙漠。

9 staple   

n.主要产物，常用品，主要要素，原料，订书钉，钩环；adj.主要的，重要的；vt.分类

参考例句：

• Tea is the staple crop here.本地产品以茶叶为大宗。
• Potatoes are the staple of their diet.土豆是他们的主要食品。

10 irrigated   

[医]冲洗的

参考例句：

• They irrigated their crops with water from this river. 他们用这条小河里的水浇庄稼。
• A crop can be sown, weeded, irrigated, and fertilized uniformly. 一种作物可以均匀一致地进行播种，除草，灌溉和施肥。

11 retailers   

零售商，零售店( retailer的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• High street retailers reported a marked increase in sales before Christmas. 商业街的零售商报告说圣诞节前销售量显著提高。
• Retailers have a statutory duty to provide goods suitable for their purpose. 零售商有为他们提供符合要求的货品的法定义务。