The Shed That Fed a Million Children

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

Why I looked at this book

There are two reasons why I decided to read this book. Firstly, what was supposed to take a week ended up being the author's life's work. What motivates a person to change their life like this? Secondly, poverty seems to be everywhere, and ideas for tackling it seldom seem to work. But maybe if it were approached in the right way it would be possible to greatly reduce poverty. After all, the world seems to have enough resources, just they are not shared out very evenly. I'm hoping this book might give new ideas on how to deal with poverty.

First impressions

It seems that the author's recipe for dealing with poverty is Just Do It. He describes how on hearing about lack of food in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina he quickly got together a lorry full of supplies and drove it to help. After this there were more journeys, and an expansion to help those in need elsewhere. I'm interested to find out how a small action like this can scale up to help millions of people. The book is written in a lively style which keeps the reader interested, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book.