Who was Practical Actions founder?
Practical Action was founded by radical economist and philosopher, Dr. E.F Schumacher, author of ‘Small is Beautiful’. Born in Bonn, Germany in 1911 Fritz Schumacher emigrated to England in 1936 to contribute his skills to the building of a caring socialist economy. He soon won the admiration of fellow economists Keynes, Beveridge and Cripps and from 1950 to 1970 held the post of Economic Advisor to the National Coal Board. It was in 1955 while on secondment as Economic Adviser to the Government of Burma, that he first became interested in the problems of developing countries. He began to formulate his ideas of using low cost, appropriate, small-scale development ideas to help people to help themselves. He later expressed this as ‘find out what people are doing and help them to do it better’. In 1965 Dr Schumacher, together with three friends, founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group, with the aim of propagating approaches to managing technical change that are effective in
