The Alliance is a poverty alleviation initiative. We are aiming to improve livelihoods in a sustainable way for the poor in the areas where the local partners work. It is essential that we define which poverty we are addressing and how we expect it to change and how we are to measure this change.

I would like to see all of our local partners to identify (as well as possible)
1. Who are the target group(s),
2. Why they are considered poor (in what way and by what measure),
3. How are we planning to help them and what results we are expecting, and
4. How we are going to measure our degree of success.

By posting ideas and suggestions in this forum I hope to stimulate a discussion to help our partners to think about these issues and address the four points above. I am happy to entertain replies either in this forum or via e-mail.

This is a central issue for the Alliance and needs to be in place before the end of the year as otherwise we run the risk of others defining poverty "for us" and then measure our progress against their definitions.

Hans

Just to add to these questions:


According to the World Bank “Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water....”

The countries in which the Alliance is working have made significant advances in addressing all these issues: In Cambodia, poverty levels have come down from 47% in 1994 to 30% in 2007; the prevalence of undernourishment in total population 40 % in 1995-97 to 22% in 2005-2007, with the other countries having similar success stories to tell. Drastic declines in Child Mortality between 1990 and 2008 from 56 to 14 in Vietnam, from 32 to 14 in Thailand, from 157 to 61 in Laos and just from 117 to 90 in Cambodia indicate significant overall improvements in health care provision and nutritional and hygienic standards.

So... if less and less people are experiencing hunger, more and more people are having shelter, more and more people are living healthier and longer, more and more people are receiving basic education and fewer and fewer people are living in extreme poverty - what is left to be done by the Alliance? Working with people and communities that are excluded from these developments? People who are living on the periphery and marginalized? If the people and communities we are working with are not starving, if they have a roof over their head they can call home - what is it that makes them poor?

The answer they - and most people - would provide: “Not enough money!” When most of the income they derive from whatever livelihood activities they are engaged in is spent on food, not much is left for improving their living conditions, probably nothing is left for investment that would increase their farming yields or the productivity of their crafts and thus lead to higher incomes. What they need are opportunities to invest their own money (and time) to move out of poverty.
What they do not need are gifts and grants and subsidies that distort and sabotage markets, but better access to credit at reasonable conditions, improved knowledge about best farming practices, structured organizations to be able to coordinate their activities and benefit from economies of scale, and better infrastructure to be able to transport their goods to the market.
The Alliance is supporting a number of community business development initiatives that seek to harness the entrepreneurial skills of the poor. Local Alliance partners often provide financial and technical support to household and community efforts in increasing incomes. Our well-meant efforts in providing support and solutions to their problems are effectively subsidizing their small household and community ventures either directly with money or indirectly with expertise and technology, thus discouraging them to develop and apply their own solutions to their most pressing problems.

I am very interested in the later two questions that Hans posted.
It is important to know what we would like to achieve in a project; however, in my experience, i see sometimes we can not know the exact expected results at the beginning of a livelihood project.

As reported to WAP, in Nam Dinh ,CORIN-Asia currently implement livelihood projects at different levels or focuses although the fundamentary key is to create income for the local.
Because not all livelihoods can evolve at the same rate or to reach the same level of development. Based on the local capacity, we define the appropriate target or degree of success for each livelihood activity.
for example:
1- Food security: intergrated farming (VAC) including bee keeping and gardening
2- Supplementary income source: Solid waste management
3- Social enterprise: Mushroom cultivation (towards a cooperative establishment)

For intergrated farming and solid waste management, we are quite confident to set the goal and expected results. For mushroom culture, it is harder because it has more potentials to grow, yet a lot of difficulties. thus, it took us more time (about 1 year) to confidently decide the expected results.
Once we know the expectations, we have always based on that to measure and report our success.

I have summarised experieces and lessons learnt from the case of mushroom cooperative in Nam Dinh in a small book. However, I also believe for the same livelihood, we also can have different expectations for different places and communities. I mean, livelihood projects are quite localized.

To me, I find it extremely challenging in facilitating the livelihood projects to support poor people to sustain and develop their livelihoods (by that mean, people can go up to processing, packaging, marketing levels just like a real enterprise) due to very subjective reasons:
- Targeted group = poor farmers -> limited resources and capacities, low competive, and somehow passive
- Facilitator = project officer: therefore need to be very active and have a business mind. Especially i think it becomes harder for the community development officers who used to work in a non-profited environment, and now need to have a practical and business mind.

To my limited experieces, there is no other projects like livelihood development, because in that we need to apply all skills and tools to negociate and convince people, to research and traing, to give people a fish rod - but sometimes still need a tiny fish to "entice" them etc.
I hope this post adds something to this discussion.