When I began writing this series on poverty reduction, I had one conviction in mind: knowledge should not be locked away. The lessons we have learned—through practice, mistakes, and decades of experience—are not just mine to keep. They belong to the communities who built them, the institutions that nurtured them, and the future generations who will carry them forward.
That is why I have chosen to publish this series under a Creative Commons license.
What Creative Commons Means
Creative Commons (often called CC) is a global system that allows authors to share their work openly, while making clear how it can be used. Unlike traditional copyright, which restricts sharing and reuse, Creative Commons invites others to use the work—provided they respect certain conditions.
For this series, I am using the CC BY license. That simply means:
- Yes, you can share these posts with anyone—your students, colleagues, communities, or networks.
- Yes, you can adapt the material—translate it, simplify it for training, or expand it for discussion.
- Yes, you can build on it—combine it with your own experiences or research.
- The only request is: please give credit by mentioning the author and source.
In other words, the door is open. Use this work as freely as you wish, but remember to acknowledge where it came from.
Why Creative Commons Matters for Poverty Reduction
Poverty reduction is not the task of one person or one organization. It is a collective mission that requires shared insights, shared mistakes, and shared successes. By keeping this series open under Creative Commons, I hope:
- Educators can use the material in classrooms without hesitation.
- Practitioners can take ideas into the field and adapt them for their context.
- Communities can own the knowledge and pass it forward.
Practical Ways to Give Credit
- In presentations → add “Source: Rajaratnam Abel – Poverty Reduction Blog (Creative Commons BY)”
- In your training manuals → cite at the end “Adapted from Rajaratnam Abel’s blog, under CC BY”
- Online → link back to the original blog post with my name and a note that it is CC BY
- This work by Rajaratnam Abel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
An Invitation to You
As you read these episodes, I invite you not just to absorb the content but to use it, share it, and adapt it. If you think a section can spark a conversation in your village, classroom, or office—please take it. If you translate it into another language, even better. Just let others know where it came from so the chain of learning remains intact.
This is the spirit of Creative Commons: knowledge that grows by being shared.
Rajaratnam Abel 