Poverty Outreach Working Group

To target very poor or vulnerable populations with services that meet their needs, practitioners must consider a number of on-the-ground realities that they may not face with other populations. The Poverty Outreach Working Group investigates how to provide sustainable microfinance and enterprise development services that help the very poor move out of poverty. For over 15 years, the working group has disseminated learning on poverty outreach through publications, international conferences, seminars, and workshops that explore subjects such as the following:

• Microcredit and enterprise development for vulnerable populations
• Income-generating loan programs for refugees
• Local and international financing for poverty lending programs
• Poverty assessment methods
• Village banking and economic education

Learning Products

• Role of cash transfers in pro-poor market development programs aimed at the ultra-poor (November 2010)
• Three concept papers"Local Financial Institutions Learning to Move Down and Out: the Cases of Credit Unions and Rural Banks Adding Village Banking to Their Traditional Lines of Service" by POWG member Chris Dunford, Freedom From Hunger (2005)
  • Poverty Assessment Primer, submitted to the IRIS Poverty Assessment Tools project for input into Manfred Zeller's paper, Review of Poverty Assessment Tools (February 2004)
  • Local and International Financial Mechanisms for Poverty Lending, Internal Accounts in Village Banking (2000)
  • Economic Education in Village Banking, Organizational Development, Sustainability and Impact in Village Bank Programs (2000)
• "Three-Step Income Generation Program" by POWG member Sarah Ward, American Refugee Committee International (2005)
• "Microenterprise Seed Capital and Matched Savings for Very Poor People Living with HIV/AIDS in Cambodia" by POWG member Jan Maes, Trickle Up (2005)
• "Activists for Social Alternatives (ASA), India" by POWG member Gaamaa Hishigsuren, IDEAS (2005)
• "Learning Conversations" by POWG member Bobbi Gray, Freedom From Hunger (2005)
• "Annotated Bibliography on Articles and Publications Exploring Poverty Down-Reach" (2005)
• Progress Note: Measuring Poverty Directly: Insights from ACCION's Poverty Assessment Project (October 2005)
• Progress Note: Microfinance and Social Performance: How FINCA Used a Client Assessment Tool To Identify Mission Drift (October 2005)
• New Directions in Poverty Finance: Village Banking Revisited (October 2002)
• Poverty Lending: Financial Self-Sufficiency and the Six Aspects of Outreach (2001)
• "Reassessing the Financial Viability of Village Banking: Past Performances and Future Prospects" in Microbanking Bulletin (September 2000)
• "Village Banking Credit Dynamics, Evidence from Seven Programs" (1999)
• "Village Banking, State of the Practice" (1996)

Get Involved

The Facilitator for the Poverty Outreach Working Group is Jan Maes. Working group members must be staff of SEEP Network institutional members. Click here to find out how you can contribute.