Targeted Development Programmes for the Extreme Poor: Experiences from BRAC Experiments

This paper presents the evolution of various approaches of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) to unravel the knots of various livelihood constraints of the chronic poor and to try and design programs for them.BRAC takes the following three approaches:

• First approach: This approach was built around food security but the impact of mere food transfers was found to be short-lived;
• Second approach: BRAC's Income Generation for Vulnerable Group Development (IGVGD) program aims to strategically link the food aid with training, savings and credit;
• Third approach: The CFPR program, which is still in its early phase, takes a far more comprehensive conceptualization of the knots in the poverty web, ranging from lack of assets to lack of voice.

The paper seeks to explain, on the basis of IGVGD experience, the importance of strategic linkages that build the missing step which the extreme poor need, in order to move on to using more market based instruments. Linking micro finance with food aid is one way to include the extreme poor who otherwise are not covered by conventional microfinance. The author concludes that programs targeted at extreme poor:

• Need to take a cyclical and more complex perspective of graduation rather than a linear one;
• Need to consider transforming socio-political relationships at various levels that perpetuate poverty, in addition to household level resource based understanding of poverty and deprivation.