Theory of Change

1. Contextual Analysis

The 2010 Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) reported 17.6% of the

population as falling below the lower poverty line. That is over 28 million people. Perhaps three quarters

of these are chronically poor in that their poverty is not only severe but also multi-dimensional and long

lasting1. These people are not only income poor, but face chronic deficits in the realms of food security,

health, nutrition, education, physical security, housing, vulnerability to shocks, social empowerment and

access to rights. This depth and breadth of poverty is passed across the generations through economic

(eg lack of assets), physical (eg poor nutrition) and social transmission mechanisms, with the latter

including strong gender dimensions and the exclusion of marginalised groups.

Extreme poverty is present throughout Bangladesh but is particularly prevalent in 5 regions where the

Economic Empowerment of the Poorest Programme (commonly known as the shiree programme,

meaning steps in Bangla) has been active since 2009. These 5 regions are the Chittagong Hill Tracts-

politically and economically marginalised, the NE Haors region- remote with isolated villages flooded for

6 months, the North Western Region – prone to seasonal hunger or “monga” and periodic drought, the

Southern Coastal Belt - extremely vulnerable to climatic shocks including cyclones and tidal surges, plus

Dhaka urban slums and streets.

Despite being disaster prone, facing severe political disruption and suffering endemically poor

governance and corruption, the Bangladesh economy continues to exhibit strong macro-economic

growth with resultant reductions in aggregate poverty. A key contextual feature is that strong growth

alone will not be sufficient to eradicate extreme poverty given the chronic nature of the situation faced

by these and many millions of other cases. Purposive programmes targeted at the extreme poor are

needed.

1 See Andrew Shepard, Chronic Poverty Research Centre – Addressing Chronic Poverty 2013

5 Cases

32 year old man living in Kurigram District. Married with 4

children. Engaged in sporadic day labour.

40 year old married man living in seasonally flooded Haor

region. Adult children. Isolated by floods during rainy season.

Seasonal migration for work.

23 year old physically disabled man, living in Dhaka slum

with wife. Begs for income.

60 year old widow belonging to isolated indigenous

community in remote Chittagong Hill Tracts.

17 year old girl living in climate change affected Satkhira

District. Recently married, working as domestic maid.

2. A Set of Primary Assumptions

First Assumption: Latency to escape from poverty: there are no lost causes!

Despite the severity and multi-dimensional nature of their poverty, all extreme poor households have

the latent potential to graduate from extreme poverty.

Evidence: Global History provides evidence over sufficiently long periods of time as there are countries

that have successfully defeated or close to defeated extreme poverty in concert with transition to

middle or high income status. What is less clear is whether permanent exit from extreme poverty can be

achieved for the most chronically poor households within the lifetime of a, typically 3 year, livelihood

support project operating in a country that has yet to transition to even middle income status. However

there are sufficient case studies of dramatic transformation in the lives of extremely poor beneficiaries

within prior shiree cohorts to justify adopting the latency assumption.

Second Assumption: There are interventions that are proven to work!

There are well tried and tested interventions that can be implemented at Household Level that

demonstrate a strong likelihood of allowing the household to transition out of extreme poverty within a

2-3 year period.

Evidence: The shiree programme has targeted the poorest 3-5% of the population (ie well below the

lower poverty threshold) in the most difficult to access locations. Implementing NGOs have succeeded in

taking over 60% of households out of extreme poverty over 3 year intervention periods (Change

Monitoring System)

Further support for this assumption is provided by the success of prior programmes such as BRAC-

Further support for this assumption is provided by the success of prior programmes such as BRAC-

Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction (CFPR) that reports 90% graduation and the Chars

livelihoods Programme (CLP). The methods adopted by these programmes are broadly similar to shiree

in involving some combination of asset and cash transfer plus training and group mobilisation.

5 examples of direct interventions

Provided with a cow and artificial insemination technology.

Given nets and secured fishing rights to waterbody.

Provided with skills training and a garments sector job.

Transferred 3 piglets for rearing.

Receives equipment and training for crab-fattening.

Third Assumption: The costs of complexity can be managed!

It is possible to deliver many thousands of livelihood interventions at scale in an efficient manner

without losing the diversity of interventions necessary to address locally specific opportunities and

constraints.

Evidence: The shiree programme is already working successfully with 248,000 households in the 5 main

focus regions through about 25 NGO sub contracts. The challenge fund mechanism allows access to a

wide variety of region or client group specific NGO working experience and expertise. Client specialisms

amongst current contractors include Help Age, ADD and Handicap (disability), Plan-International (street

children) and DSK (Slum dwellers). Other major contractors have regional presence and established

networks dating back many years, for example – Oxfam and Uttaran in the Southern belt or Caritas and

Greenhill in the Hill Tracts. The Management Agency/Sub-contractor Model enables the diversity in the

portfolio necessary to address the multiple specific determinants of poverty while providing a common

monitoring and financial management function and, critically, mechanisms and spaces for knowledge

exchange and shared learning. The result of the latter processes is to allow continuous review and

enhancement of interventions.

Fourth Assumption: Sustainability - Self-sustaining Momentum towards permanent graduation can be

established.

The sustainability assumption is the most difficult to demonstrate given the impossibility of measuring

the post project impact within the lifespan of the project itself. The best that can be achieved is to

demonstrate that a positive upward trend is established amongst participating households with

behaviour that supports the conclusion that resilience to subsequent re-impoverishment is being

Graduated from Extreme Poverty

Skills developed in multiple IGAs, empowered, food secure, access to services, savings accumulated.

Community groups formed to facilitate market linkages, group savings, support networks and build confidence and empowerment. Continued training on IGAs.

Receives asset and training on asset

Targeted as extremely poor

Graduation Checklist:

Food security

Net cash income

No. of Income Sources

Cash Savings

Value of Productive

Assets

Non-productive assets

Food diversity

Nutrition

Health

Drinking water

Sanitation

Gender empowerment

Access to land (rural)

Steps out of extreme poverty

gradually established. Positive indicators include re-investment in productive asset accumulation,

diversification of income sources (a strong indicator of resilience), investment in health and education

outcomes for the entire family, accumulation of savings, the re-combination of families that had become

fragmented through severe traumatic poverty and the increased engagement of families with local elites

including government officials and politicians. There is evidence from programme monitoring systems to

verify all of these positive indicators and there is evidence from longer running programmes of a similar

nature, such as those of BRAC, that livelihood gains continue on an upward trend. Nevertheless it is

indisputable that families remain highly vulnerable to shocks felt either at the level of the household,

the community or even the nation (eg a national flood of 1998 proportions, major cyclone or

earthquake). Systemic social protection reform and/or the advent of affordable and effective social

insurance are key medium to long term conditions for protecting the gains from livelihood interventions

and achieving the ultimateeradication of extreme poverty. These systemic changes are not entirely

exogenous to the intervention given the inclusion of a strong advocacy stream (see below).

Fifth Assumption: “the boundaries of permissible thought2“can be expanded to encompass the

eradication of extreme poverty in Bangladesh

This is the key assumption underlying the research and advocacy work that is core to the programme

model. For research to demonstrate that extreme and chronic poverty can be effectively treated and

how it can be treated. For advocacy to use multiple sources of programme and research evidence to

convince those with access to power and resources to take on the idea and to act on the objective of

achieving zero percent extreme poverty. Without an acceptance of this idea as a realistic, doable,

“SMART” objective the perception of the extreme poor will continue to be as being worthy of charity

but largely excluded,through some combination of location, gender, caste, race, age, ability and

education, from the benefits of national economic success.

Current programme experience working with the extreme poor has identified the following 6 challenge

areas:

Access to employment opportunities

Vulnerability to external shocks

Gender inequity

Health and Nutrition Vulnerability

Access to Public services and transfers

Marginalised group specific risks and vulnerabilities

The value of the research and advocacy activities already underway but scheduled for further support

through the resource bid is that a realistic national programme to address all of these areas with the

ultimate objective of the eradication of extreme poverty is adopted by the political, economic and

intellectual elite of the country - across deep political divides. If the combined elite can accommodate,

breed and be motivated to action by this thought it will be possible to eradicate extreme poverty in

2Shephard - CPRC

Bangladesh- perhaps even by 2021- the 50th anniversary of the formation of the country. This would

require taking about 1 million households out of extreme poverty each year.

Donors, multilaterals, INGOs and other external actors will play a key facilitating role through their

funding, advocacy and implementation functions.

To summarize:

Assumption Verified Evidence

Sufficient extreme poor beneficiary households can be found

√ Programme has successfully recruited 248,000HH in 5 regions. BBS statistics indicate many millions of unserved extreme poor despite other programmes with a similar target group.

These people have the potential to emerge from extreme poverty

√ Several large programmes have demonstrated good success rates with NGO implemented livelihood support interventions based on asset/cash transfer with associated training and support.

A range of appropriate interventions exists

√ Implementation experience has led to improved targeting and design of the right intervention based on analysis of individual household need and capacity. It is no longer “one size fits all” and household level monitoring using mobile technology provides a rapid learning loop about what works best.

A robust management mechanism can deliver appropriate interventions at scale despite complexity

√ The challenge fund/Management Agency model provides this mechanism and value is added through the inclusion of critical learning, sharing and project enhancement forums and tools based on a dynamic stream of monitoring and research evidence

The continued progression of households towards a position of resilience can be supported

√ Within the programme timeframe through continued monitoring, top up support and contingency resources. Beyond the programme timeframe through work with government and other counterparts to establish a strong national vision and shared commitment to the eradication of extreme poverty – that will result in systemic reform to social protection mechanisms and targeting of core public services.

5 examples of locally

appropriate livelihood

interventions

There are a set of

conditions necessary for

these interventions to

succeed at scale

Each extreme poor household faces a

unique geographical, economic,

politicalandsocialcontext

But each has the potential to move out

from a life in extreme poverty

32 year old man living in Kurigram District. Married with 4

children. Engaged in sporadic day labour.

40 year old married man living in seasonally flooded Haor

region. Adult children. Isolated by floods during rainy

season. Seasonal migration for work.

17 year old girl living in climate change affected Satkhira

District. Recently married, working as domestic maid.

60 year old widow belonging to isolated indigenous

community in remote Chittagong Hill Tracts.

23 year old physically disabled man, living in Dhaka slum

with wife. Begs for income.

Provided with a cow and artificial insemination technology.

Given nets and secured fishing rights to waterbody.

Provided with skills training and garments sector job.

Transferred 3 piglets for rearing.

Receives equipment and training for crab-fattening.

Effective project

mgmt. and

financial

oversight

Comprehensive

HH level

information

funding Proven

approaches to

poverty reduction

Wider enabling

environment-

access to public

services

Management

Agency and

established

NGO

partnerships

Change

Monitoring

System

DFID

funds

Effective

implementation

of evidence based

interventions

Effective national

and local level

advocacy and

research

thousands more people enabled to graduate from

extreme poverty

There are well proven

interventions that can

transform the lives of

these extreme poor

households. (Prior experience of EEP/shiree,

BRAC, CLP and others)

5 C

ase

s (Source: HIES 2010)

The objective is to

nurture thousands

more household

level economic

empowerment

interventions and to

increase the rate of

graduation amongst

240,000 prior

beneficiaries

Graduated from Extreme Poverty

Skills developed in multiple IGAs, empowered, food secure, access to services, savings accumulated.

Community groups formed to facilitate market linkages, group savings, support networks and build confidence and empowerment. Continued training on IGAs.

Receives asset and training on asset

Targeted as extremely poor

RISK Mitigation

Failure rate: Availability of top-up funds

and household targeting mechanism

based on near real time data. Continued

research into the dynamics of extreme

poverty leading to the enhancement of

design interventions.

External shocks: Availability of contingency

fund to enable robust response to floods,

fires, evictions etc.

Political indifference and inaction:

Increased support for national and local

level advocacy initiatives and knowledge

dissemination (i.e. The Manifesto for the

Extreme Poor).

Graduation Checklist:

Food security

Net cash income

No. of Income

Sources

Cash Savings

Value of Productive

Assets

Non-productive

assets

Food diversity

Nutrition

Health

Drinking water

Sanitation

Gender

empowerment

Access to land

(rural)

Transformation Process out of Extreme Poverty