Resources

This book evaluates the impact of a sample of NGOs on poverty in rural South India. It provides an overview of the Government of India's poverty alleviation programmes, and discusses the role of NGOs. Four case studies are presented of the Rural Development Trust Community Organisation Programme (credit funds), the Church's Auxiliary Programme for Social Action (village organization and planning for self-reliance), the Kanyakumari District Fishermen Sangams Federation (marketing cooperatives), and the Arthik Samata Mandal Agricultural Development Programmes (credit, land levelling and irrigation). Each case study is examined with respect to its context, history and structure, impact in terms of realisation of objectives, economic and social impact, distribution of benefits, external influences, cost-effectiveness, sustainability and potential for replication. Strengths, weaknesses and lessons from each case are discussed, The concluding section summarizes the case studies in terms of reaching the poorest, types of benefits, innovation and flexibility, costs and reasons for success. Each case study contains discussion of methods and extents of participation, and the conclusions consider the impact on the poorest.

This describes a Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) undertaken by the Government of Kenya and the World Bank during Febuary-April 1994. It had three primary objectives; to understand poverty from the perspective of the poor, to start a process of dialogue between policy makers, district level providers and the poor and to address the issue of the 'value added' of the PPA approach to understanding poverty. Methods used included mapping, wealth ranking, seasonal analysis, trend and price analysis, focus group discussions, key informant interviews; visual card methods, gender analysis, understanding health seeking behaviour; and incomplete sentences. Statistically the findings of the PPA and the Welfare Monitoring Survey based on an established poverty line were strikingly similar. The study also found a gap in the perception of poverty between the poor themselves and district officials. Separate chapters look at poverty in urban Nairobi and Mandera district.

The paper identifies that using participatory approaches in World Bank country economic and sector work may involve extra costs, as well as some loss of control over timing and quality of the work. It argues that experience has shown that these costs are more than offset by substantial benefits, which include improvements in the Bank-borrower relationship, speedier acceptance of recommendations both by the Bank and the Borrower, and increase in-country capacity for policy research analysis. These issues are discussed by looking at the costs and benefits of the Participatory Country Economic and Sector Work, P-CESW, the different types of participation involved and the systematic involvement of stakeholders. The paper also discusses the experience of the Bank, by looking at steps involved in a P-CESW, the establishment of a Participatory Environment, the identification of questions for analysis and the participatory data collection and analysis. It also addresses issues on strategy and the doÆs and donÆts for Task Managers. It concludes that P-CESW is both feasible and valuable, in that it is not only fully consistent with the BankÆs growing posture of transparent operations and increased disclosure, but it can enhance the BankÆs status on these issues rapidly because CESW it self is such a crucial part of the BankÆs comparative advantage as an analytical institution.

The Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF) is a micro-finance NGO working in South Africa to provide savings and credit facilities to support business development of the poorest people. Reacting to a realisation that they were not reaching the poorest people, the SEF undertook a pilot study using participatory wealth ranking to establish people's own criteria of poverty. These proved to differ from the externally judged criteria that they had been using to assess eligibility for membership, and led to the adoption of participatory mapping and wealth ranking instead. Their challenge was then one of scale; how to apply this methodology to villages of 700 - 1000 households? This article focuses on some of the challenges faced in designing a cost-effective system that would work in such large villages. It uses Bhungeni village as a case study to illustrate the application of the methodology and then goes on to discuss some of the wider issues of the relevance and use of wealth ranking in the context of a micro-finance programme.

Many microfinance organisations are concerned about reaching the poorest sections of society, and are prepared to carry out screening procedures to identify these people. This article describes a pilot study to compare two such screening methods, the Visual Indicators of Poverty (VIP) test and the Participatory Wealth Ranking process (PWR), which have been used by the Small Enterprise Foundation in South Africa. A study is described which demonstrates the inaccuracy of VIP, a system based on static, externally judged criteria, when compared to PWR, which uses local knowledge of individual poverty. The article also focuses on some of the challenges faced in designing a cost-effective operational system based on participatory mapping and wealth ranking.

This newsletter is a special issue on trying to bridge the gap between donors' resources and their effective use in targeting the poor, through the use of community development funds. Community development funds function like banks, but can work more flexibly and at different levels. Several case studies are presented from countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa, and a number of tips and advantages in setting up a community development fund are outlined. Some of these are that they: " Set new standards of transparency and accountability; " Make multiple, small-scale investments in many community-initiated urban development projects; " Support tangible outputs of value to the urban poor, in different sectors and areas; " Help establish and strengthen long-term partnerships between community organisations, municipal authorities and the private sector, while stimulating new working practices; " Provide poor communities and their organisations with opportunities to learn by doing.

This consultants report provides a framework for ActionAidÆs fundraising and communications activities in Greece, Ireland, Italy and UK. It examines income, expenditure and profitability; resource allocation and investment; number of supporters; communications and public campaigning; organisational infrastructure; and international fundraising for ActionAid in the four countries.