Developing Certification Criteria Workshop: Final Workshop Report

This report documents the process of Developing the Certification Criteria workshop. The objective of the workshop was to:

• Gather input from practitioners on criteria that USAID will use to certify poverty measurement tools;
• Ensure that a broad range of opinions on this issue are collected and presented to USAID;
• Encourage participation of the very poor in USAID-supported activities;
• Strengthen the spirit of teamwork among participants.

The participants of the workshop:

• Identified and prioritized the key issues;
• Discussed possible challenges in using certification criteria and recommended solutions;
• Examined areas of diversity (rural/urban, geographical, lending methodologies, etc.) and ways to address them.

Finally, the report presents the recommendations for seven criteria in assessing the poverty assessment tools that emerged from the discussions during the workshop and consultations with USAID and the Developing Poverty Assessment Tools Advisory Panel. These state that the poverty assessment tools should:

• Accurately predict poverty;
• Have low risk of misreporting or manipulation;
• Be short and simple to use;
• Have minimal cost of staff time;
• Have ease of data collection and analysis;
• Have limited cost to client;
• Be applicable in a wide variety of situations.