ABSTRACT
Mona Bishay of the International Fund for Agricultural Development had two questions about the initial results of the evaluation of the World Bank's strategy on poverty alleviation. One finding of the evaluation was that some projects managed to reach the poor even though they took place in dysfunctional or noenabling macroeconomic environments. In identifying the leverage point likely to have the biggest impact on livelihoods, one could take a holistic perspective in the analysis but narrow the focus to one set of interventions to be pursued, rather than trying to tackle everything. As for targeting, for most basic needs, such as education, health, and water supply, broad targeting was appropriate. For other aspects of poverty reduction, such as income generation, targeting should be rather narrowly focused. Andrew Shepherd responded that donors who were talking increasingly about looking at the totality of interventions had begun to talk about joint evaluation and its inherent difficulties.
