This paper describes a method for measuring poverty which combines features of wealth or well-being ranking with a survey.
A need exists for food security indicators, for use in targeting food security programs, to be both simple to derive and use. This document reports on research to develop such alternative indicators which combined both quantitative and qualitative approaches for identifying indicators of poverty, food insecurity and undernutrition. Participatory rural appraisal techniques and ethnographic case studies were used to identify locally determined indicators of food insecurity.
Based on research in poor village communities in West Bengal using participatory mapping and wealth grouping exercises, this paper analyses rural people's perceptions of poverty and suggests policy measures based on them.
This document outlines the learning process that the Rural Integrated Project Support, RIPS Phase II has gone through in introducing a participatory approach to its work in rural development in two southern regions of Tanzania over the last five years, as seen by the stakeholders and facilitators in that process.
Robert Chambers argues that central issues in development have been overlooked and that many past errors have flowed from domination by those with power. Through analysing experience - of past mistakes and myths and of the continuing methodological revolution of PRA - the author points towards solutions. He argues that personal, professional and instiutional change is essential if the realities of the poor are to receive greater recognition.
Concern with poverty within the World Bank has ebbed and flowed over time. What is different about current thinking is that awareness of "women in development" and "gender and development" is far more pervasive. The gender and poverty relationship, which has been readily taken up by development agencies such as the World Bank, is far from straightforward, and there are concerns that objectives about unequal gender relations will become subordinatied to an agenda about increasing welfare. This is the context within which this paper addresses gender in the World Bank's Poverty Assessments. By analysing six assessments from four countries the paper outlines ways in which gender concerns actually do, or do not, appear. It seeks to explain why gender appears in the forms it does and when it does. A number of points emerge not simply about the approach to gender within the World Bank, but also about the approach to poverty, to methodological issues and to policy.
The UK Coalition for the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty was formed in 1996 to put the eradication of poverty on the nation's agenda. The "Poverty and Participation Workshop" was organised to: provide an opportunity for people with diverse experiences of poverty from different geographical areas to reflect on and share their experiences; to provide a forum through which those with direct experience of poverty could influence the anti-poverty organisations by highlighting key issues and suggesting ways forward; and to strengthen the participation of people in poverty within the IYEP Coalition. This report attempts to reflect the discussions and spirit of the day in order to share them with a broader audience, as well as provide a model of participation that other organisations can look to in organising events of this nature.
In the past, poverty alleviation programmes have been implemented with limited involvement of poor people in determining the mode of intervention. PRA has been used in recent times to highlight the poor peoples' own perspective of poverty. This paper presents some of the experiences in sub-Saharan Africa.
Trip report covering: consultations with the poor, PRA networking, and an international PRA workshop
This case study examines the participation of people in project planning and implementation in Sonebhadra district in Uttar Pradesh. It focuses on a development project, which was started in 1994 by Jan Jati Vikas Samiti (a local voluntary agency) in partnership with Action Aid. The objective of the study is to ascertain reasons for the participation and non participation of local people in project planning and implementation, and to make suggestions about how current policy can be modified to improve levels of participation. After giving details of the study, the article concludes that: there was little involvement of people in the planning of projects (any involvement was in the implementation); there was a strong male bias, in terms of resources, decision making and advice giving; and there was a growing resentment towards the programmes, primarily due to false promises made at the start. It finishes with a series of recommendations of changes that need to be made to ensure greater participation of the community at all levels of the project.
Editorial looking at the potential traps of those who are not poor pronouncing on the realities of those who are. It highlights the differences in livelihood strategies and realities between these groups, and how little understood these are by professionals who hold power. Using Bindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda as an example it goes on to show how participatory approaches can enable poor people to express and analyse their individual and shared realities. In the end the question remains of whose realities, whose priorities, count?
This document is a monitoring report of the "Rural Initiatives and Poverty Relief Project" (PROINDER) in Argentina. It offers an overview of the PROINDER project, a description of the methodology employed, and the participatory characteristic of the project. It concludes that the project had a strong and coherent participatory component in the diagnosis stage but later, in the preparation stage, participation was confined to consultation, without access to decision-making mechanisms.