Like this article? PLEASE +1 it! Evan Signature
Evan Carmichael Top Header about About Home Profiles articles Tools forums inspirational quotes About facebook Twitter YouTube Blog

poverty reduction Tagged Articles



7.4.4 Donors
In poor, aid-dependent countries, the likelihood of pro-poor training strategies being introduced will depend very heavily on the policies and practices of their main donor partners. Unless, therefore, donors are prepared to concentrate the bulk of their assistance on poverty reduction as well as change their policies on VET, the prospects for the implementation of pro-poor training strategies are seriously reduced in most of these countries.

Training vouchers for Jua Kali enterprises in Kenya
The Micro and Small Enterprise and Technology Project in Kenya incorporates many of the key features of the Bank's overall approach to VET. The provision of training vouchers to 60,000 entrepreneurs and workers among already established jua kali (hot sun) manufacturing enterprises is the main mechanism for improving skill levels. The total cost of the project is US21.83 million over a six year period (1994/95 - 2000/01).

7.3.4 Labour market reform: Mainstreaming skills development for the poor
Training for the poor must also be part of a coherent set of active labour market policies. Without concerted government interventions to eliminate key impediments that prevent women, disabled persons and other discriminated groups from gaining equitable access to formal sector jobs, efforts to equalise training entitlements will ultimately fail.

7.3.2 Training as a basic social service: Mainstreaming skills development for the poor
Redressing inequities and under-provision in the formal education system is of vital importance, both for achieving a more equitable allocation of jobs in the formal sector for women and other disadvantaged groups and, more widely, for sustained poverty reduction.

7.2.1 A pro-poor training strategy: Room for manoeuvre
Recommendations concerning poverty reduction are frequently flawed because they fail to take adequate account of underlying political and social constraints and the ability of the state to fund and deliver effective programmes.

6.2 Traditional interventions: For-profit and NGO training activities
The training programmes of traditional NGOs have been similar in many respects to those offered by public sector VET government institutions. In particular, long-term pre-employment training in traditional trades for school leavers and the disabled have predominated.
5.3.2 Pre-employment: Public sector training
Most post-secondary public VET institutions have no explicit goals with respect to poverty reduction.
3.1 The public sector: Training priorities, resources and reorientation
"While there is long history of poverty-focused training in developed industrial economies, it is still relatively rare in the large majority of developing countries where most of the poor live" (Malik, 1996:46). This seems particularly ironic given that most of the world's poor live in developing countries. The following discussion looks at why public sector training priorities continue to favour non-poor groups. We shall focus in particular on the design of poverty reduction programmes, overall resource availability and competing claims over training resources from other sectors and groups.

2.1.3 The potential for change
Given the received wisdom that training for the poor has had limited impact and training systems have not reoriented to meeting the need of the poor, the key question is 'what is the scope for improvement with respect to both these dimensions of the training crisis?' Again, the prevailing mood among leading commentators is decidedly pessimistic. Broadly speaking, two types of pessimism can be discerned.

2.1 Dimensions of crisis
There are two basic sets of concerns about VET and poverty reduction. The first focuses on the failure of most targeted training interventions to have any appreciable, sustained impact on livelihoods.
EVSE target groups: Learning to change
Poverty is the inability to maintain a minimal standard of living. It consists of two elements. The first is the expenditure necessary to buy a minimal standard of nutrition while the second element varies from country to country and reflects specific national normative concepts of welfare. As societies become wealthier, perceptions of the acceptable minimum level of consumption also change. Consequently, poverty is a context-specific concept and, as such, is very much a moving target (See DANIDA,1996).
Moving Forward: Developing Countries
There are many economic, social, and environmental challenges along the path to sustainable development, and there is no panacea to address them all. Rather, accelerated development will require progress in multiple policy areas, with the right policy mix and focus varying from country to country. Countries may also need to make difficult choices regarding trade-offs between competing policy objectives. Achieving more sustainable development will thus require a concerted effort from developing countries, the international community, and the international financial institutions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY - E-COMMERCE FOR DEVELOPMENT: PROSPECTS AND POLICY ISSUES
References
Macroeconomic “Shock-absorbers” for Africa
The need for further fiscal consolidation
The Rise of China and India: What's in it for Africa?
China’s and India’s strong appetite for energy and metal has boosted international prices and the volume and value of African exports.
Recommendations for future research - Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia
In light of the conclusions drawn above, there is a need for further policy and action oriented research and in-depth investigation. First and foremost, there is a need for extensive empirical evidence to verify and ascertain the capabilities of micro-credit in reducing the depth and scope of poverty.
Concluding Remarks - Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia
One of the most important outcome of the analysis in this paper has been that while most MFI programmes aim to reduce poverty and empower women through their programme, there is usually no clear implementation mechanism to fulfil these aims; they continue to be programmes with the same requirements and characteristics.
Savings Mobilisation: Tenets of Micro-credit for Poverty Reduction
One of the more common requirements of most MFIs is to encourage savings amongst the clients so that they develop an attitude of savings first and borrowing on that amount, and also to empower them, in the long term, to be independent of borrowing from external sources.
Women and Micro-credit
Since the establishment of the Grameen Bank as a micro-credit delivery model, many programmes have rushed to replicate the relative success and in doing so, a lot of attention has been given to female micro-credit borrowers. Women were specifically targeted because they make up the majority of the poorest of the poor in the rural areas and are responsible for the social and economic welfare of the family.

Introduction - Abstract - Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia
Poverty reduction has been identified as the overarching long term goal for most of the development interventions in Africa, and more recently crystallised in the Millennium Development Goals and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). In Africa, more than 40% of its 750 million people live below the internationally recognized poverty line of $1 a day, and the evidence is even more worrying for sub-saharan Africa.
Abstract - Factors Impeding the Poverty Reduction Capacity of Micro-credit: Some Field Observations from Malawi and Ethiopia
In most African countries women tend to account for an average 51% of the population, and make up about 65% of the rural labour force. Thus, many rural based micro-finance programmes have attempted to address the women specific need for micro-credit. This paper analyses the effectiveness of micro-credit as a means to reducing poverty, with particular focus on women, and demonstrates, through the critical analysis of some country-specific examples, that the use and supply of micro-credit does not always lead to a sustainable impact on household or female poverty reduction. Analysis of findings are done based on field data, interviews, and observations from Malawi and Ethiopia.
Sustained growth with equity is needed to halve poverty in Africa
Researchers predict that many African countries will not reach the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving extreme poverty by 2015. Will accelerated economic growth or better income distribution be most helpful in getting African countries get back on track to achieve the MDG poverty target?

Assessing social performance cost-effectively
Many MFIs have an explicit social mission that goes beyond profitability such as reducing poverty and exclusion by providing good quality, reasonably priced and sustainable financial services to poor people who are normally excluded from regular banking systems. The link between microfinance services and poverty reduction, however, is far from simple. Positive impacts cannot be taken for granted.

5.12 Social dialogue: Working Out of Poverty
Promotion of tripartite mechanisms to strengthen the decent work dimensions of national economic and social development policies aimed at poverty reduction.
5.9 Employment and enterprise development: Working Out of Poverty
Analysis of trends in employment to identify sectoral or regional patterns of growth or decline. Improving the information base on where people work and how much they earn, labour force participation and household incomes, disaggregated by sex and age.
5.4 Solidarity in a globalizing world: Working Out of Poverty
Despite efforts to reduce the burden of excessive debt, many lowincome countries are still using a substantial portion of their resources to pay interest and repay the capital of earlier borrowing.
5.3 Harnessing the potential and sharing the stresses of economic integration: Working Out of Poverty
Many low-income countries are already closely connected to international markets, with exports and imports of goods and services constituting on average 43 per cent of GDP for the LDCs in 1997-98.
4.6 Conclusions: Working Out of Poverty
Institution building for decent work and poverty reduction
4.0 Sustainable pro-poor growth and the governance of the labour market: Working Out of Poverty
It is revealing to look at the challenge of reducing and eventually eliminating poverty from the perspective of the drive to create decent work for women and men. Such a viewpoint helps to focus the attention of public authorities, from the local to the global level, the social partners and relevant groups in civil society on how to make institutions and markets serve better the needs of those most at risk of being trapped in poverty.
3.0 Community action for decent work and social inclusion: Working Out of Poverty
Global and national strategies for poverty reduction should provide a framework for local strategies to escape cycles of low incomes from work and social exclusion. The ILO has considerable practical experience of community actions that create more and better jobs for women and men living in poverty and improve their chances of securing a life free from deprivation. Much of this work is in developing countries, but these approaches have also proved to be easily applicable in a number of transition and industrialized market economies.
2.9 Conclusions: Working Out of Poverty
For people living in poverty, discrimination and multiple deprivations cumulate to create a cycle of disadvantage. Recurring themes of the experience of poverty are the low returns to work of women and men in socially excluded communities and barriers to finding decent work opportunities.
2.8 The foundations of a decent work strategy for poverty reduction: Working Out of Poverty
Most analysts of the nature and causes of poverty agree that growth in per capita income is essential to reducing poverty and that persistent growth failures are accompanied by a persistent failure to reduce poverty. However, they have not found a stable relationship between the rate of average per capita growth and the rate of poverty reduction.
1.16 Building a more inclusive global economy: Working Out of Poverty
A strategy that combines local action in a sound national macroeconomic framework with an international effort to boost and sustain investment, trade growth and technological transfers could yield a substantial dividend in the form of poverty reduction and growing markets. I would like to flag a few issues.
1.13 Working safely out of poverty: Working Out of Poverty
The poorest workers are the least protected. More often than not, prevention of occupational accidents and diseases is missing from the agenda where they work. Hazardous work takes its toll on the health of workers and on productivity. It is unacceptable that the poor must be resigned to facing disproportionate risks to their safety and health because they are poor. South Asian countries are tackling hazards to workers, communities and the environment in the ship-breaking industry, and the ILO is working with them and other international partners to do so. We are showing that improvements can be made in working conditions and the environment in micro and small informal enterprises by low-cost investments that also raise productivity.
1.9 Building local development through cooperatives: Working Out of Poverty
Participation and inclusion are central to a new approach to poverty reduction.
1.2 From Copenhagen to the Millennium Declaration: Working Out of Poverty
In 1995, the Copenhagen Social Summit put the “people’s agenda” back into the forefront of international policy. By stressing the interlinked challenges of poverty, unemployment and social exclusion as central to a global social justice strategy, the Social Summit marked a turning point for the multilateral system. It reinforced the ILO mandate in the world of work and gave new impetus to the promotion of core labour standards.
Preface: Working Out of Poverty
This is my third opportunity to offer the Director-General’s Report to the International Labour Conference. The first, Decent work,revisited our mandate, interpreted it and defined our mission for the world of today, based on ILO values. You subscribed to the agenda we set out, which affirmed that the ILO had to be concerned with all workers, including those beyond the formal labour market.
Financial Sector Development as an Essential Determinant for Achieving the MDGs: Increasing Private Credit Shown to Reduce Income Inequality
Whether or not one has access to private credit is a litmus test for wealth or poverty. If you're rich, you have it, and can use it to get richer. If you're poor, you don't have access to it, and you remain poor. Conventional wisdom suggests that building up the financial sector has little effect on this gap.

Least Developed Countries Report, 2007
The UNCTAD has recently released the Least Developed Countries Report, 2007, subtitled "Knowledge, technical learning and innovation for development".

Least Developed Countries Report, 2007
The UNCTAD has recently released the Least Developed Countries Report, 2007, subtitled "Knowledge, technical learning and innovation for development".

When is microfinance NOT an appropiate tool? FAQ
Microfinance increasingly refers to a host of financial services—savings, loans, insurance, remittances from abroad, and other products. It is hard to imagine that there would be any family in the world today for which some type of formal financial service couldn't be designed and made useful. But the fact of the matter is, that in most people's mind, "microfinance" still refers to microcredit.

2.0 Gender in African economies: Gender Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness in Africa, 2007
The study Can Africa Claim the 21st Century? made the argument that Africa has enormous unexploited potential, especially the potential of women. Specifically, it pointed out that women comprise one of Africa’s hidden growth reserves, providing most of the region’s labor, but their productivity is hampered by widespread inequality in education as well as unequal access to land and productive inputs.
6.3 Come Together: Enterprise solutions to poverty
an invitation to invest in proving and positioning enterprise as a key part of the solution to poverty
6.0 Propositions and conclusion: Enterprise solutions to poverty
We have argued throughout that the expansion of enterprise, particularly SMEs, is critical to economic and poverty reduction. This is hardly a new or revolutionary argument. It has been advanced by many others starting probably with Adam Smith. Indeed, a great deal of government policies and IDC interventions over the years have focused on creating the enabling environment for the expansion of the private sector in poor countries.
2.3 Social Development I: Economic Report on Africa 2007
While growth has recovered on the continent, the gains in terms of social development and poverty reduction are still limited. This sub-section reviews the evidence on social development through the lenses of the MDGs. Following a discussion of progress and challenges for the various goals, the sub-section provides a more detailed discussion of the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS. More details on progress towards the MDGs in Africa is provided in various ECA documents, including a forthcoming report (UNECA 2007), as well as reports by other United Nations publications (e.g. UNDP and UNICEF 2002).
Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Policy Reforms
“For successful poverty reduction, African countries have to be in the driver’s seat,” says World Bank Africa Region Vice-President Gobind Nankani. “Africans know best where the shoe pinches. They should craft their own poverty-reduction strategies based on national realities.”

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - ‘Bad policy’
Since the mid-1990s, economic performance has improved significantly in many African countries, with average annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) rising steadily from less than 3 per cent in 1998 to 5 per cent in 2005. In theory, according to many economists, this should have led to higher employment.

Other poverty reduction Related Articles

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Policy Reforms
“For successful poverty reduction, African countries have to be in the driver’s seat,” says World Bank Africa Region Vice-President Gobind Nankani. “Africans know best where the shoe pinches. They should craft their own poverty-reduction strategies based on national realities.”

Microfinance as Key Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Component: The Majority of PRSPs Include Access to Financial Services
By the late 1990s, it was clear that something was not working in the field of development. Deteriorating economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, the failure of Structural Adjustment Programmes used by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the question of how to link debt relief to poverty reduction led policy makers to adopt the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) initiative in September 1999.

1.9 Building local development through cooperatives: Working Out of Poverty
Participation and inclusion are central to a new approach to poverty reduction.
2.4 Agricultural workers and rural communities: Working Out of Poverty
A better understanding of the social and economic dynamics of rural communities is critical to the reduction and eradication of poverty. The world’s poorest countries are those most dependent on agriculture. Threequarters of the people in extreme poverty live in rural areas.
2.8 The foundations of a decent work strategy for poverty reduction: Working Out of Poverty
Most analysts of the nature and causes of poverty agree that growth in per capita income is essential to reducing poverty and that persistent growth failures are accompanied by a persistent failure to reduce poverty. However, they have not found a stable relationship between the rate of average per capita growth and the rate of poverty reduction.
3.5 Building local development through cooperatives: Working Out of Poverty
The participation of people living in poverty in policies to improve their livelihood and counteract social exclusion and vulnerability is increasingly emphasized in poverty reduction strategies.
5.2 International economic integration and social justice: Working Out of Poverty
Policies to improve the governance of the labour market based on the decent work approach can create and enlarge the channels that ensure that sustainable growth yields the largest possible reduction in poverty. However, a large proportion of people experiencing extreme poverty live in countries that are themselves economically and socially excluded.
5.6 A coherent framework for national and local action: Working Out of Poverty
Increased in-depth analysis of the multifaceted experience of poverty is leading to a growing awareness of the need for a range of policies that are specific to the problems faced by different communities and countries. Given that the causes of poverty are many and interconnected, targeted policies have most effect when they act in combination to break cycles of poverty. One of the most encouraging aspects of the new approach to poverty reduction and eradication is therefore the emphasis on policy coherence, based on a comprehensive development framework.
Assessing social performance cost-effectively
Many MFIs have an explicit social mission that goes beyond profitability such as reducing poverty and exclusion by providing good quality, reasonably priced and sustainable financial services to poor people who are normally excluded from regular banking systems. The link between microfinance services and poverty reduction, however, is far from simple. Positive impacts cannot be taken for granted.

2.2.3 Training objectives: Contributory factors
Training policy objectives with respect to the poor are frequently poorly defined. Social exclusion is a complex theoretical concept referring to causal mechanisms producing poverty. Translating this concept into practical, poverty reduction policies has proved to be difficult in most countries (see Gore and Figueiredo, 1997).

Featured Article

Bottom Footer



Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!
Name:
Email:
Popular Articles

Web Design in 30 Minutes - Can this be Right?

What Is The Foundation for Your Vision?
Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.