ABSTRACT
�This book provides an excellent framework to analyse the experience of a wide variety of successful initiatives across the world and draws attention to critical issues that practitioners need to think about when designing poverty reduction interventions and scaling up.� Bill Tod, Regional MDG Adviser, SNV Asia �With its wide regional coverage, and frank discussions of issues and problems encountered in designing projects that directly tackle poverty, this will be a very useful reference book for NGOs, INGOs, and also for multilateral institutions.� Johanna Boestel, Country Economist, Asian Development Bank, Sri Lanka Resident Mission We are now at the midpoint for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the objective of halving poverty by 2015. Despite commendable efforts and much progress, up to 750 million people are still living in absolute poverty. To lift these people out of poverty, macro-economic policies must be complemented by targeted and local level poverty reduction. This book looks at twenty of the most innovative case studies of poverty reduction and Millennium Development Goal localization from fifteen countries - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Paraguay, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam - covering diverse issues ranging from housing and tourism to socio-economic empowerment of women, health insurance and markets for livestock produce. Many of the cases started as small scale interventions by NGOs, donors or government pilots but now they are being scaled up to form part of national policy or replicated across their respective countries. Yet why do some work while others do not? What are the stumbling blocks and how can they be overcome? And what lessons and principles are there for replicating and scaling up poverty reduction initiatives worldwide? This book tackles these questions and more, and presents a wealth of knowledge, evidence and ideas for all practitioners and researchers working to reduce poverty at the local level while aiming to achieve a global impact. Published with UNDP
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|53 pages
Employment Generation and Participatory Area Development
chapter 3|9 pages
Upgrading Housing as a Strategy for Poverty Reduction
part II|51 pages
Local Economic Development
chapter 4|13 pages
Poverty Reduction through Local Economic Development
chapter 5|18 pages
Poverty Reduction through Rural–Urban Linkages
part III|89 pages
Agriculture and Rural Development for Poverty Reduction
chapter 8|18 pages
Information and Communications Technology for Poverty Reduction
chapter 9|13 pages
How Joint Action Can Increase Production While Contributing to Poverty Reduction
chapter 10|19 pages
Poverty Reduction and Millennium Development Goal Localization
part IV|73 pages
Localization of Millennium Development Goals and Monitoring
chapter 12|19 pages
Community Driven Development to Improve Livelihoods
chapter 13|15 pages
Recent Experience with the Community Voice Card
part V|60 pages
Social Safety Nets and Microfinance
chapter 16|14 pages
Poverty Reduction and Millennium Development Goal Localization
chapter 17|16 pages
Beating the Odds
chapter 18|15 pages
The Phil-Health Indigent Program
part VI|18 pages
Community Mobilization and Advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals