Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction:

Programme Experience

| Rabeya Yasmin | Coordinator | |CFPR |

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Presentation Outline

• Extreme Poverty : Bangladesh Record

• Definition of Ultra Poor

• “Pushing down” and “Pushing out” strategies in CFPR

• Key Lessons Learnt

• What makes the programme work

• Future Challenges and CFPR Phase II

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Extreme Poverty : Bangladesh Record

• Head count poverty decreasing : from 70% in 1973-74 to 47% in 1995-96.( 2200 k.cal.)

• About 20% still remains below the lower poverty line of 1805 k.cal/person/day

• The Ultra Poor spend 80% of their income on food but fail to reach 80% of their recommended calorie intake

• Ultra Poor are largely remaining left out of the mainstream development programmes

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Background of CFPR

• BRAC has worked successfully with focused programme for the ultra poor since 1985

• Conventional microfinance programs often view the ultra poor as high risk group

• Generally the disciplines of microfinance do not suit the livelihood patterns of the ultra poor

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CFPR is –

A “Pushing Down” strategy to combat ultra poverty

and

A “Pushing Out” strategy to combat broader social constraints

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Pushing down BRAC interventions to reach the ultra poor effectively

Objectives

Assist the ultra poor to improve their livelihoods by achieving positive economic, social and aspirational changes

Assist the ultra poor to access mainstream development services

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Coverage in the First PhaseDuration: 5 year

Year : 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Total

Members served : 5000 5000 10,000 30,000 50,000 100,000

No. of districts : 3 7 12 15 15 15

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Pushing down to reach the Ultra Poor: Definition of the Ultra Poor

• Households with < 10 decimals of land.

• Those who earn livelihood as beggar, day laborer, domestic aid.

• Households with no productive assets.

• Children of school-going agetaking up paid work .

• No adult active male member in the household

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Pushing down to reach the Ultra Poor: A Brief Overview of HH

Identification Process

A. Geographical Area Selection:

Areas and villages with high incidence of ultra poverty

B. Household Selection:

Participatory Rural Appraisal Door to door mini surveyVerification

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• 54 % completely landless

• 50% of household cannot afford two meals a day

• 70% depend on irregular day labour for income source

• 95% ultra poor have no fixed place for defecation

• Only 3% of the ultra poor household reported ever participation in development programmes

Some baseline information on the ultra poor (2002)

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Supports and services provided to ultra poor members through the pushing down strategies

• Enterprise Development Training

• Special Investment /Asset Transfer

• Stipend as short term income support

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Tailor Made Health Interventions for the Ultra Poor Members

• Promotive (eg. Health education, awareness raising)

• Preventive (e.g. Immunization, ANC, Vitamin A)

• Limited curative care (e.g.TB and other treatments)

Financial Assistance For Mild and Severe morbidity

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Tailor Made Social Development Programme for The Ultra Poor Members

• Social Awareness Education

• Community Mobilization (Village Poverty Reduction Committee)

• Confidence building

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Tailor made Social Development: Community Mobilization for The Ultra Poor Members

Village Poverty Reduction Committee to :

- Provide social security , resolve social conflicts

- Install tube well , sanitary latrines - Repair/ rebuild houses - Support ultra poor during illness- Help enroll their children in school

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“Pushing out” the agenda to challenge broader socio – political constraints

Objectives

Creating an enabling environment to sustain the livelihoods and realize the rights of the ultra poor

by: - Supporting essential health services as public

goods, and

- Building community level institutions to provide social protection and work with local government

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Support programmes

• Advocacy and Social Communication

• Action Research

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What makes the programme work

• Thoughtful and well-consulted programme design taking past experiences of BRAC

• Careful staff recruitment and development process

• Effective monitoring and supervision

• Close Coordination

• Continuous research and evaluation

• Enormous support from development partners

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Key Lessons Learned

• The ultra Poor are not homogeneous group

• Special efforts needed to change the “mind set at all levels” .

• Close follow-up is ‘a must’ for any program for the ultra poor.

• Educating/assisting the ultra poor on making their future plan is critical

• Social mobilization is necessary to create an enabling environment for the ultra poor

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Future Challenges and CFPR Phase II

• Rethinking targeting

• Addressing diversity

• Continuing health support for the graduates

• Capacity building

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CFPR Phase II

• Five year programme : 2007-2011

• 300,000 Ultra poor families in most deprived regions with rigorous support package

• Another 500,000 ultra poor families in comparatively less deprived regions with reduced package

• Strengthened advocacy

• More research on ultra poverty

Generating Knowledge and Evaluating Progress:

A summary of five years of CFPR/TUP research

| Imran Matin | Director | | Research and Evaluation Division |

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The broad objective

• Understand dimensions and dynamics of extreme poverty to support programme and create a knowledge base for others to use.

• We organized our work to deliver on three fronts:

• Establishing solid evidence of impact

• Doing responsive research to serve programme needs

• Leveraging knowledge

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CFPR/TUP Impact Evaluation: Using various perspectives

Objective indicators Self perception

External evaluation

ImpactCOM

MU

N I T Y

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A few terms…

• Selected Ultra Poor (SUPs): Households finally selected by the CFPR/TUP programme.

• Not Selected Ultra Poor (NSUPs): Households ranked as ultra poor (the bottom wealth category) by the community but not finally selected by the CFPR/TUP programme.

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Highlights of Findings: Objective Measures

• Baseline in 2002: NSUPs>SUPs

• Panel survey in 2005: SUPs> NSUPs in almost all dimensions

– Better access to land– Diversification and more physical assets– Reduced illness, but taking more days off, spending

more on illness, and better health-seeking behaviour– Better access to formal and informal credit market – Greater social and legal awareness– Improved nutrition and calorie intake

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The Shape of Asset Pentagon Changes for the SUPs…

0

0.5

1Physical

Human

FinancialNatural

Social

NSUP02 SUP02 NSUP05 SUP05

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Highlights of Findings:Self Perception Measures

• Better overall improvement for SUPs– In 2005, almost 70% of the SUPs felt their economic

standing had improved over the one year before interview, compared to only 21% of the NSUPs.

• SUPs are now more food secure– SUPs households also feel more secure regarding

availability of food throughout the year.

• SUPs now have better social standing– Ability to spend during festivals has increased for

SUPs.

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Highlights of Findings:Self Perception Food Security Measure

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Highlights of Findings:Self Perception Measures

• SUPs are now more confident – More of the SUPs are confident that villagers will

lease land to them.

– SUPs believe they can borrow a larger amount from different sources in times of crisis – NSUPs report a significantly lower amount. 

– 83% of SUPs are confident that their crisis coping ability has improved, and they need less time to recover from crises

• SUPs feel more healthy, especially women – Programme intervention had a significant effect on

self perceived health status of women in SUP households.

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Highlights of Findings:Participatory Change Rank

Although the general trend is of a widening gap between the richest and the poorest, SUP households according to the community, have fared better than non-beneficiaries in terms of change ranks.

Richest

Rank 2

Rank 3

SUP

NSUP-0.6

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Groups

Ch

ang

e sc

ore

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Are the improvements sustainable?

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

2002 2004 2006

Average food consumption (gm/pp/pd)

SUP

NSUP

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Are the improvements sustainable?

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

2002 2004 2006

Total energy intake (Kcal/pp/pd)

SUP

NSUP

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Puzzles that emerge….

• No significant impact on SUP children’s education status (enrolment and continuation)

– how does assetization affect household strategy regarding schooling decision?

– What strategy should the programme have to incentivize schooling? Conditionilizing stipend?

• No significant impact on U-5 children’s nutrition status

– Need for special nutritional focus for this critical age group

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Puzzles that emerge/2

• Latest HIES suggests that the bottom 10% have been doing well. But, we find, using participatory methods, that the poorest (NSUP) are perceived by the community to be on the whole getting poorer.

– Is this a region specific phenomenon? – Are national surveys missing out on the ultra poor

households? – Is there a reverse ‘Jodha’ effect? If so, in what ways

and why?

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Outputs thus far…

• A CFPR/TUP Working Paper Series. 15 WPs until now.

• 10 publications in peer reviewed journals.

• 20 presentations based on CFPR/TUP research and evaluation work made in various national and international conferences.

• All study reports posted on RED’s website: www.bracresearch.org

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Outputs planned…

• BRAC, CPRC, University of Manchester Conference on “What Works for the Poorest? Knowledge, Policies and Practices” , Dhaka, Dec 2006.

• Book on CFPR/TUP research, evaluation and programme experience for the conference

• Edited book on “What in the World Works for the Poorest? Programmes, Policies and Practices”, based on the conference.

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The Next Years: Establishing more rigorous and complete

evidence of impact

• Continue with the current panel at least for another round to assess sustainability of changes.

• Randomized Control Design for a small sub sample.

• Exploring seasonalities in consumption and crisis coping.

• Sample design to include other wealth categories.

• Go beyond household level and capture meso level changes in market and non market institutions.