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Editor's Note: After two weeks of voting on the OneWorld.net site, Martin Fisher received the highest number of votes for OneWorld's People of 2008 Award.

Thanks to all who took part in the spirited and insightful online dialogue with Martin during the month of January. Martin has responded to all your questions, challenging some long-held orthodoxies on how best to help people out of poverty and discussing topics from the science of farming in Africa to the business models that work for the world's poorest families.

To support his work, consider giving a donation to Martin's organization, KickStart, which is helping to build a sustainable pathway out of poverty for hundreds of thousands of families.

Nominated by: Joshua Schuler, Lemelson-MIT Program

WASHINGTON, Nov 24 (OneWorld) - Martin Fisher is a businessman, an activist, and a mentor, among many other things. But first and foremost, he's an inventor and a humanitarian -- one whose inventions have helped hundreds of thousands of people move themselves and their families out of poverty.

Martin Fisher. © Lemelson-MIT ProgramIn the early 1990s Fisher began inventing products to help Africans create profitable businesses, like a manual seed press that allows farmers to extract oil from sunflower and other seeds to sell as cooking oil.

But, arguably, Fisher's biggest breakthrough came in 1997. That was when he recognized that, because the vast majority of those in poverty are small-scale farmers, he could help many more people raise their standards of living if he could help them farm more productively. People just needed a way to earn more money from the daily labor they were already doing.

The irrigation technologies he and his team of engineers have developed since then are now generating $81 million of new income each year for farmers in some of the poorest countries of the world. Some 350,000 people have moved out of poverty thanks to Fisher's inventions.

"These poor rural farmers have one asset: a small plot of land; and one basic skill: farming. The best business they can pursue is irrigated farming," Fisher said, accepting an award for his innovation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in April. "Once they employ irrigation, the farmers can grow and sell high-value crops, like fruits and vegetables. They can grow year-round and reap four or five harvests, instead of waiting for the rain to grow a staple crop once or twice a year."

"At KickStart, we see [the poor] as entrepreneurs," says Fisher. "We see them as extremely hardworking people seeking the opportunity to get out of poverty."The most widely used of Fisher's pumps -- the aptly named MoneyMaker -- retails for about $100 and earns farmers an average of $1,000 profit per year. It can pull water from a pond, stream, or well as deep as 30 feet below the pump, and spray it continuously to a height of 40 feet above the pump. It can push water through a hose as far as 1,000 feet on flat ground, and it has the ability to irrigate as much as two acres of land.

It's easy to use and maintain, and portable. A new version of the pump costs about one-third the price of the MoneyMaker, and allows a farmer to pump water using his or her arms, legs, and body weight in a simple rocking motion.

Over 60,000 farmers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mali are running profitable businesses using Fisher's pumps.

But Fisher's success, and that of the nonprofit he founded to help market his inventions, are also thanks in large part to his well-designed business model.

His organization, KickStart, looks for business opportunities that can begin with initial investments of no more than a few hundred dollars, and which will return the initial investment within three to six months -- or "farm time." Farmers are used to putting their money in the ground for short periods while they wait for the harvest, KickStart explains on its Web site. KickStart is not trying to change local people's habits, it's finding the most profitable ways to work within them.

Click here to see Fisher and the KickStart team in action, in a video prepared for the Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation.The organization's designers develop only locally appropriate tools that will help people increase their income. They are some of the very few engineers in the world that are designing specifically with poor people in mind, so their technologies are much more likely to be useful and appropriate for poor people's use.

"We (in the West) purchase technology that promises to save us time and effort," KickStart notes. "But in the developing world, time and effort are two assets that people have in abundance. So rather than trying to ease a burden, we look for tools that will help a person maximize the cash income they receive in return for their investment of time and labor."

KickStart develops an entire supply chain, from factory to farmer, and then goes out to the fields, to let people know about the products, how they work, and how an investment can help radically improve their family's standard of living.

Finally, KickStart rigorously evaluates its own products to determine not just how many are selling, but how many people they are lifting out of poverty.

"At KickStart, we see [the poor] as entrepreneurs," says Fisher. "We see them as extremely hardworking people seeking the opportunity to get out of poverty."

Maurice Simatei. © KickStartMaurice and Josephine Simatei are a prime example. Maurice was over 60 years old, squatting on a small plot of land, and irrigating his family's crops with a bucket, when he first saw a neighbor using one of Fisher's pumps. Recognizing the investment potential, Simatei sold his only real asset -- a cow -- and bought a pump, which enabled him to begin growing tomatoes, cabbage, and kale in addition to the maize that is the staple food in his part of Kenya.

Within a year he had earned enough to buy a milling machine, allowing him to make flour, which Josephine sells at market. As profits continued to grow, he bought a motorized pump, which has allowed him to expand his business even more, and give his original pump away to his brother to improve his tree nursery.

Now 70, Maurice has inspired several of his neighbors to also invest in pumps and grow their own incomes. One has even made enough to buy a tractor and a trailer and start a transport business on the side.

No one is more excited -- and thankful -- for the family's success than Josephine. "The MoneyMaker Pump was a breakthrough for our whole family," she told representatives of KickStart when they visited recently to do an impact assessment. "We are so happy to meet the man, Dr. Fisher, who designed this pump!"

* This story profiles one of ten finalists for OneWorld.net's People of 2008 award. Vote for your favorite, read more profiles, or tell us about other amazing people on OneWorld's People of 2008 page.

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