Often considered to be one of the most vulnerable countries to the climate change, Bangladesh faces threat to its natural… Read more resources, livelihood security and general wellbeing of the people owing to its topography and geographic position. Moreover, vulnerability increases because of the challenges the country faces in adapting to the changing climate and in mitigating the responsible climatic factors. Some regions of the country, such as Char, are more vulnerable to the changing climate than the other parts. Therefore, giving due attention to such areas becomes a mandate for the development partners working along with the governments. To address the livelihood vulnerabilities of the extreme poor population of the Char areas in Kurigram district, Concern Worldwide implemented the project named “Empowering Women and Youth through Graduation and Financial Inclusion (EWYGFI)” in two Upazilas (sub-district)—Kurigram Sadar and Ulipur. The field operation was implemented by Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS), while Trickle Up supported the project to channelize the funding from MetLife Foundation with their technical assistance in implementation. While implementing, the project perceived the necessity to understand the climate change-induced impacts on program participants in the project implementation area. Consequently, this study titled “Understanding the impact of climate change on poor and vulnerable Char people” was commissioned to DM WATCH. The purpose of the study was to identify specific climate-induced impacts affecting poor and vulnerable people living in the Char regions of Bangladesh and make recommendation on how future programming could better help people mitigate or manage climate-induced risk. Read less ...

A livelihood support programme called ‘Enhancing the Productive Capacity of Extremely Poor People’ has been implemented in southern Rwanda since… Read more 2011by Concern Worldwide-Rwanda, with financial support from Irish Aid. In this report, research around the three areas of coaching, relationships and empowerment is presented, with one substantive chapter of findings devoted to each topic. Before presenting the findings, Chapter 2 summarises the methodology that was designed and implemented to conduct the fieldwork in Rwanda. In terms of coaching, Chapter 3 discusses the personal qualities, workload, responsibilities and performance of Community Development Animators (CDAs). Chapter 4 considers how participation in the programme affected relationships with family members and neighbours in the community, as well as the effects of training provided on conflict management and ‘Men Engage’. Chapter 5 explores four dimensions of empowerment –personal, economic, social and political –as well as perceptions of empowerment by participants and CDAs. Chapter 6 concludes by identifying three related areas where the effectiveness and sustainability of the programme could be enhanced. Read less ...

The document shares the learnings of Empath's coaching program "Mobility mentoring", designed to improve the earnings of low-wage workers. The… Read more author suggests that mobility mentoring can be incorporated into different types of programs and delivered at scale.  Read less ...

The Family Hope Program (PKH), a conditional cash transfer, is designed to reduce intergenerational poverty by increasing access to education… Read more and health services for children so that they can improve/ develop their HR capability. Various studies have shown that this program contributes positively to improving health conditions, nutritional status, and the education level of beneficiary families. Nevertheless, the ability of the program to improve the family economy is still very limited, as reflected by the small proportion of beneficiary families who have graduated. Limited ability to improve the family's economy is partly due to the lack of integration of the PKH program with other economic empowerment programs–for example, the People's Business Credit (KUR) program or the Ultra Microfinance Program (UMI). This report investigates ways by which integration of the PKH program with programs that provide support for economic improvement can take place. The purpose of this report is to explain the labour strategies that social protection beneficiaries utilise so that government and development partners can think critically about how to more effectively link these two domains. Read less ...

Authors of this report measure the impacts of the National Rural Livelihoods Programme on a range of household and individual… Read more level economic, social and empowerment outcomes and also assess the quality of institutions created by the programme. Read less ...

A decade since the start of the Syrian crisis, nearly all Syrian refugee families in Lebanon live in poverty and… Read more struggle to meet their basic needs. As part of their response, the World Food Programme (WFP) provides multi-purpose cash (MPC) assistance to 23,000 Syrian refugee households in Lebanon, supporting some of the most vulnerable refugees in meeting their basic needs. Conducted by the Overseas Development Institute in partnership with the Cash Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Organisational Network (CAMEALEON). Hosting the largest per capita refugee population in the world, Lebanon has been coping with nine years of refugee influxes and prolonged displacement which has invariably impacted the country’s social fabric. In 2018 and 2019, CAMEALEON partnered with the Overseas Development Institute to examine the role of WFP MPC in shaping relations, social cohesion and stability among Syrian refugees as well as between Syrian refugees and their host communities in Lebanon. Drawing on the experiences and perceptions of 270 respondents at three sites in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, this research is based on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions to understand whether MPC played a role in influencing opportunities for interactions; sources of solidarity, support and tension; and the experience and perceptions of discrimination, safety and security. Read less ...

The 2018 Global Compact on Refugees includes “enhancing refugee self-reliance” as one of its four main objectives. While the humanitarian community… Read more generally supports this aspiration, it is widely recognized that there are few tools to measure progress toward this objective. In 2016, RefugePoint and the Women’s Refugee Commission convened a Community of Practice (CoP), now known as the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative (RSRI), to address this gap, leading to the joint development of the Self-Reliance Index (SRI). Over the course of two and half years, from March 2017 to August 2019, practitioners from non-governmental organizations, government agencies, foundations, and research institutes worked together to create a simple and universal tool to measure a refugee household’s progress toward selfreliance over time. The SRI Version 1.0 was made available for limited distribution from August 2019 – February 2020 during a ‘soft launch’ phase. This phase produced extensive learning that informed improvements in the SRI for Version 2.0. Following assessments of interrater and intrahousehold reliability during the development stage, data collected in the soft launch phase allowed for assessment of internal consistency. Analysis of the data collected was also used to inform the final scoring system of the SRI. User experience and structured feedback from the in-person training and remote support provided additional input for the refinement of the tool, User Guide and training materials. The iterative development of the SRI is a first global effort to create a universal tool to measure refugee self-reliance, highlighting the importance of continuous learning to understand the SRI in new settings and with new populations. As the SRI 2.0 is rolled out more widely with new partners and in new contexts, there will be a continued effort to monitor the reliability and validity of the tool. In addition, data from new contexts may inform decisions to further refine the tool’s scoring algorithm, although no significant changes to the scoring system are anticipated. Objectives for the next phase will also be aimed at integrating the SRI into a variety of partner systems and investigating the effectiveness of different training mechanisms. The next phase also aims to explore how gender interacts with the use and results of the SRI. Read less ...

This paper studies the long-run effects of a "big-push" program providing a large asset transfer to the poorest Indian households. In… Read more a randomized controlled trial that follows these households over 10 years, we find positive effects on consumption (0.6 SD), food security (0.1 SD), income (0.3 SD), and health (0.2 SD). These effects grow for the first seven years following the transfer and persist until year 10. One main channel for persistence is that treated households take better advantage of opportunities to diversify into more lucrative wage employment, especially through migration. Read less ...

Given the millions of lives at stake, we must pinpoint where social services are most needed and ensure that the… Read more social protection programs are evidence-based and inclusive. Research from the International Growth Centre, directed by the London School of Economics and University of Oxford, shows that while social assistance is the main tool to lift people out of poverty, most of the lowest-income people are left behind due to mistargeting and low data quality. Furthermore, social protection systems must be multifaceted, moving beyond short-term help and instead support people to lift themselves from poverty for the long run. “What idea is bigger than the idea that the poorest of the poor have enough talent to be self-sufficient, that if you give them a push, they’ll stay up?” Abhijit Banerjee said in his Nobel Prize lecture in 2019. Solutions like holistic anti-poverty interventions and rapid assessments are most likely to be effective when local governments are involved in both consultation and implementation. Read less ...

Before COVID-19, many countries were making significant gains in human capital, improving health and education outcomes for girls and boys… Read more and empowering women to reach their potential. Between 2010 and March 2020, the World Bank’s Human Capital Index 2020 Update found an average increase of five percent in the human capital index across countries. Now, the pandemic and its shocks to market, health, and education systems jeopardize this progress – 25 years of development achievements have begun to unwind in the span of 25 weeks. Economic disruptions have disproportionately harmed those who are already vulnerable, threatening to push an additional 47 million women and girls into extreme poverty. Women are more likely to work in the informal economy, preventing many from accessing crucial social protection programs, especially in low-income countries. Women also bear a greater burden of unpaid care work at home, and this gap has only widened during COVID-19. As COVID-19 threatens hard-won gains in human capital around the world, governments, international development organizations, civil society, and the private sector must come together with a revitalized sense of solidarity to deliver emergency support quickly and effectively. Even more important is to take a long-term view of how to support countries in building inclusive, resilient systems for food and nutrition, health, education, social protection, water, sanitation, infrastructure, and jobs. Read less ...