LPP Pilot Project Focuses on Helping the Very Poor

Luckshmi Sivalingam, Program Officer for Grameen Foundation's Solutions for the Poorest program, oversees the Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest (LPP) project, and has been working with the field team in Gaya since April 2010 to design the livelihood and financial products, services and methodology making up the integrated livelihoods model. We've posted an introduction to her blog post featured at CGAP below, with a link to the full post following it.

Sunita Devi, a participant in Grameen Foundation's Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest Pilot

Before Grameen Foundation’s Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest Pilot could begin its mission of serving the most impoverished and underprivileged families in Gaya, India, our team faced three critical questions: “Who are the ‘very poor’?  What does poverty look like in their context, and what are its propagators?  What do the very poor need to propel them on a pathway out of poverty?”

Our field team held meetings with villages and their leaders using an “interactive and inclusive method of rural appraisal, whereby the community members themselves define what poverty means in their own context and categorize individuals according to local definitions.”   Through these discussions, household surveys and use of the Progress out of Poverty Index^® (PPI^®), a selection criteria for identifying a community’s poorest households was created. Working in partnership with BASIX India’s The Livelihood School, the selection tool is being used to “ensure the inclusion of households currently excluded from microfinance services and government social welfare” in our pilot program.

To learn more about how Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest Program is servicing the selected 200 “very poor” households through “financial services and livelihood support,” please read Luckshmi's full post on the blog of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP).