Resources

This report provides an assessment of the extent of and changes in poverty in Kenya during the '80s and early '90s. It uses data from different sources and of different kinds, including was a Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) and a Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMS). Interestingly, in three out of five districts the results yielded by the two approaches were almost identical. The PPA provided critical insights on a number of issues - people's perceptions of the extent and causes of poverty, the status of women, the extent of and reasons for low school enrolment, the reasons for not using public health facilities and the ways in which poor people cope with food insecurity and drought. Methods used included social mapping and wealth ranking, interviews and focus groups discussions. The different chapters present the findings of the study, focusing on economic development and poverty; revitalising the rural economy; structural transformation in agriculture; social sector spending (education and health); food security and nutrition; and targeted programmes and institutional factors. A strategy of programmes and policies for poverty reduction is suggested.

This report examines poverty in relation to community forestry and dairy development. The initial section discusses the background to the study and the methods used. The emphasis is on PRA, with checklists developed and lists of tools identified. The four different communities are described, and although the subsequent analysis is sectoral, the differences between the four communities are highlighted. There are numerous case studies interspersed in the text. Forestry and Dairy are two areas where there have been many active interventions in the past, and the aim of the study was to give people a voice in what they felt about these interventions. These subjects are therefore dealt with in great detail, including an analysis of recent changes related to the projects. Issues around education, democracy and gender are also explored in depth. The final section outlines proposed new indicators of poverty which the researchers feel to be more appropriate, and recommendations for the future measurement of poverty alleviating interventions.

Many processes of change involving population, resources, environment and development are not sustainable. In seeing what to do, normal professionalism and 'first' thinking are part of the problem. The concept of secure and sustainable livelihoods for the very poor and poor is powerful. Developing this approach, the thinking of professionals about environment and development and that of poor people about livelihoods can be combined as a sustainable livelihood thinking. The potential for applying this in resource-poor environments has been underestimated. Analytical implications include the concept of sustainable livelihood intensity. Practical implications include secure rights for the poor to use and sell assets, and a new professionalism which starts not with things, but with people, putting first those who are poorer.

This article describes the manner in which the World Bank is incorporating a participatory approach into its environmental work, including the launch of the Participation Sourcebook. The Bank's Participatory Poverty Asssessment process is also briefly outlined.

This video explores numerous issues surrounding participatory poverty assessments (PPAs), using the example of a PPA in Tanzania. A key issue is the identification of the poor, about which appropriate information is needed to inform government policy. In contrast to traditional surveys of income-poverty, the PPA provides a way to understand poverty from the perspective of the poor and to enable this perspective to influence policy. The importance of the involvement of policy makers in the PPA is stressed at several points in the video. This involvement contributed to chantes in attitudes to the poor within government and a recognition of the need for a corresponding change in government development tactics. The findings of the PPA were presented at policy workshops and contributed to changes in thinking about the nature and characteristics of poverty in Tanzania, as well as more specific policy reforms. The PPA primarily used PRA methods and visual materials developed by local artists in the PPA. The methods shown include, mapping, discussion of well-being, wealth ranking with villagers and district officials, 'story with a gap' and seasonality analysis. Among the highlighted findings of the PPA are that: indicators of poverty are location specific; intangible indicators of deprivation are important; strong gender differences exist in the prioritisation of problems; the poor adapt to seasonality through complex coping strategies. The PPA also revealed that participatory methods could be used to construct time series price data for rural Tanzania, which had not previously existed. The links between the PPA's findings regarding the causes of poverty and the implications for policy are highlighted, including access to land, agricultural policy, lack of production inputs, environmental degradation and access to credit and savings.