Poverty Outreach

Poverty Outreach Working Group Description

Established: 1990

Goal

Poverty Outreach Working Group, formerly the Poverty Assessment Working Group, PAWG & Poverty Lending Working Group, PLWG. The Poverty OUTREACH Working Group (POWG) has a broad poverty focused agenda and explores both poverty assessment and poverty innovation. The group focuses on both with the acknowledgement that poverty assessment is necessary to do poverty outreach. The overarching interest of the group is in promoting down-reach to very poor people (defined as those living on less than $1 a day, or those living in the bottom 50% below their country's poverty line).

Current Activities

Poverty Assessment

The POWG engages with the greater microenterprise community to develop and test poverty assessment methods for measuring the poverty levels of current or prospective clients of microenterprise institutions. The POWG works closely with the University of Maryland’s IRIS Center to develop and test poverty assessment tools for USAID.  The POWG has monthly meetings and quarterly thematic workshops with IRIS and USAID to discuss progress and to address issues raised by members. POWG ensures the practitioners’ voices are heard during the development and testing phases of these tools. The POWG is working closely with IRIS to analyze the data that is collected by IRIS accuracy tests to develop/design the poverty assessment tools and training that will be put forward for practicality testing by practitioners in the fall of 2005. 

Poverty Innovation

The POWG will produce a book on innovations and approaches for serving very poor people which will perform an analysis of the cost/benefits of various methods and identify common features of programs that achieve significant depth of outreach.  We will also study as a group the role of microfinance in social protection, and the strategies MFIs can take such as forming strategic alliances with organizations who target very poor with grants and other methodologies. Practitioners will use the POWG to vet poverty outreach approaches with each other in order to get feedback and input into further developing their individual programs.

Accomplishments

• Produced “Promising Practices” Case Study Series:  Programs, Products and Services Specifically Designed to Serve Very Poor People (2005).  Completed case studies include:

“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” written by Chris Dunford, Freedom From Hunger (2005)

“Three-Step Income Generation Program” written by Sarah Ward, American Refugee Committee International (2005)

“Microenterprise Seed Capital and Matched Savings for Very Poor People Living with HIV/AIDS in Cambodia” written by Jan Maes, Trickle Up (2005)

“Activists for Social Alternatives (ASA), India” written by Gaamaa Hishigsuren, IDEAS (2005)

“Learning Conversations” written by Bobbi Gray, Freedom From Hunger (2005)

• Annotated Bibliography on articles and publications exploring Poverty Down-Reach (2005)

• Hosted seminars/workshops exploring the following themes:--Poverty Assessment Methods with Business Development Services programs--“Participatory Wealth Ranking” method for Poverty Assessment--The role of apex institutions in achieving scale-up.--Local and international financing for poverty lending programs.--Approaches to village banking.--Internal accounts in village banking programs.--Economic education in village banking programs.--Organizational development, sustainability, and impact in village banking programs.

• Produced three working papers: Poverty Assessment Primer which was 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) and Economic Education in Village Banking, Organizational Development, Sustainability and Impact in Village Bank Programs (2000).

• Organized and hosted an international conference of village banking programs in Antigua, Guatemala, in November 1994. More than 70 countries and programs were represented. This conference provided additional material for the research paper exploring issues and experiences in organizational development, sustainability, and impact. The conference resulted in the 1996 publication of Village Banking, State of the Practice by Candace Nelson, Barbara MkNelly, Kathleen Stack, and Lawrence Yanovitch.

• Produced the Internal Account Management Tool Kit based on input from 17 programs. The manual recommends best practices for internal account management and provides various tools to help plan and implement policies and procedures. A facilitator’s training guide accompanies The Internal Account Management Tool Kit by Judith Painter and Poverty Lending Working Group (SEEP/Catholic Relief Services, 1999).

• Organized a December 2000 international Consultative Forum on the New Directions of Village Banking. Leading village bank program leaders came together to review the challenges that still lie before the village bank approach in terms of scale, sustainability, institutional options, flexible products, and impact. PLWG invited other leading poverty-lending microfinance institutions to share their experiences in these areas, along with expert participants whose discussions challenged current thinking and drew on cutting-edge research and practices.

Publications

·        “Measuring Poverty Directly: Insights from ACCION’s Poverty Assessment Project,” SEEP Progress Note, No. 10, October 2005.  

·        “Microfinance and Social Performance: How FINCA Used a Client Assessment Tool To Identify Mission Drift,” SEEP Progress Note, No. 11, October 2005.  

·        “New Directions in Poverty Finance,” Craig Churchill, Madeline Hirshland, and Judith Painter, 2002. 

·        “Poverty Lending: Financial Self-Sufficiency and the Six Aspects of Outreach,” Gary Woller and the Poverty Lending Working Group, 2001.

·        “Reassessing the Financial Viability of Village Banking: Past Performances and Future Prospects,” Microbanking Bulletin, No. 5, September 2000, pp. 3-8. 

·        “Village Banking Credit Dynamics, Evidence from Seven Programs,” Judith Painter, Barbara MkNelly, 1999. 

·        “Village Banking, State of the Practice,” Candace Nelson, Barbara MkNelly, Kathleen Stack, and Lawrence Yanovitch, 1996.