Poverty targets
It seems as degrading to measure the level of poverty as it is to measure the weight of a starving child. But if the child is already too frail to survive, is it better to give food and a chance of life to others less frail? When trying to alleviate poverty, is it better to help a few of the most destitute or a far greater number of poor people who could use that help to achieve a reasonable level of security? And is it morally right to consider the International Development Target - to reduce the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by half between 1990 and 2015 - as a guide? Targets are excellent for raising awareness of difficult issues but efforts to achieve them can skew the process, as those grappling with the demands of the Kyoto protocol know well.
One country better qualified than most to talk about poverty is Bangladesh. Half the population of 124 million exist below the official poverty line. Public provision of basic needs is inadequate or non-existent and NGOs, some now very large and businesslike, have filled the breach. Some have attracted criticism for their high-rise office blocks in which, it is assumed, they must be losing touch with the poor they were established to serve. But they will tell you that they have had to develop the means to exist independently of uncertain international funds. This has meant developing financial and other services, and a wide variety of trading operations, to bring in the funds necessary to sustain the institution as well as its social welfare programmes. 'Not-for-profit' perhaps but 'non-profit', definitely not. Has this meant that the poorest have been abandoned as being too great a drain on resources?
Rural development programmes of NGOs targeting the poor usually include health (including reproductive health), occupational and human development training (including, increasingly, education of human and legal rights), enterprise development and, of course, microfinance. While it may well be argued that both 'assets' and 'poverty' encompass far more than income, it is income that is uppermost in the minds of those that have none. Microfinance, even under the most forgiving and undemanding terms, requires an initial period of saving, repayment and, of course, risk. This cuts out the poorest who have neither income nor willingness to take risk. However, BRAC, one of the largest of Bangladesh's NGOs, is about to establish a five year programme targeting these 'ultra' poor.
The families selected will choose what kind of activity they want to engage in, for example rearing poultry or goats, fattening a cow, growing vegetables, sewing or some kind of trade. The programme will provide the initial investment - the chicks, the goat, the cow, etc., - as a gift and back it up with training to ensure that the recipient can earn an income from it. Selling the cow a few days after the gift to pay for a daughter's wedding will not be an option. Sonya Sultan, working with BRAC's Social Development Programme, admits that the programme will be costly, that it will require intensive follow up to provide the necessary support and that it would be impossible to scale the programme up to meet the demands of the 25 million Bangladeshis who fall into the ultra poor category. Nevertheless, she says that important lessons have already been learnt from the pilot programme in Jamalpur where 5,000 women were helped and who demonstrated that they were able to retain the income-generating asset they had been given a year earlier. As important, says Dr Sultan, are the lessons that will be learnt.
Is it possible, with this kind of approach, to help people graduate out of extreme poverty to an economic status that allows them to take advantage of regular NGO programmes and credit services? Are there policy issues that should be addressed? What kind of advocacy would be effective? No-one has really paid much attention to this group of people in the past. They have been dismissed as too difficult and too expensive to help. But, by understanding how to help a few, many more may be helped in future. That would be a way to help the poorest and to achieve some meaningful progress towards the International Development Target.
