Which targeting mechanism?
Targeted development programmes for the extreme poor: experiences from BRAC experiments
Microfinance structures tend to exclude the very poor
Authors:
I. Matin; CPRC
Publisher:
Chronic Poverty Research Centre, UK, 2002
This paper, published by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), analyses Income Generation for Vulnerable Group Development (IGVGD), a programme initiated by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) which aimed to link food aid with training, savings and credit. Linking microfinance with food aid was seen as a way to include the chronically poor, who the paper argues were failed by conventional microfinance programmes. However, the IGVGD programme relied on the assumption that participants could progress from receiving food aid to using microfinance in a linear way, when in fact their needs changed over time in a way which was complex and cyclical. In addition, IGVGD targeting was mainly mediated by local government, meaning that the right to participate was distributed as a form of patronage by local elites.
The paper concludes by introducing a new BRAC programme, Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction (CFPR), which aims to address some of the issues arising from the IGVGD programme. The author argues that a major challenge for this programme will be to understand and address the factors outside of households that create poverty traps. The paper also advocates transforming the socio-political relationships at various levels that perpetuate poverty.
