Poverty is pain. Poor people suffer physical pain that comes with too little food and long hours of work; emotional pain that comes from the daily humiliations of dependency and lack of power; and moral pain from being forced to make choices – such as whether to use limited funds to save the life of an ill family member, or to use those same funds to feed their children. This book is the first in a three-part series titled ‘Voices of the Poor.’ The series is based on an unprecedented effort to gather the views, experiences and aspirations of more than 60,000 poor men and women from over 60 countries. This first book, ‘Can anyone hear us?’gathers the voices of over 40,000 poor women and men in 50 countries from the World Bank’s participatory poverty assessments.