Poverty Reduction that Works Experience of Scaling Up Development Success

?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

Overview * Part I: Employment Generation and Participatory Area Development * Good Practice in the Chambok Community-Based Ecotourism Project in Cambodia * Promoting Social Mobilization and Appropriate Housing Technologies for Disaster Mitigation and Poverty Reduction in Orissa, India * Upgrading Housing as a Strategy for Poverty Reduction: The Case of Old Lhasa, Tibet, China * Part II: Local Economic Development * Poverty Reduction through Local Economic Development: Pathway out of Poverty in Indonesia * Poverty Reduction through Rural-Urban Linkages: The Case of the Rural-Urban Partnership Programme in Nepal * One Tambon One Product, Thailand * Part III: Agriculture and Rural Development for Poverty Reduction * Dairy Projects in Afghanistan * Information and Communications Technology for Poverty Reduction: Bringing Technology to Rural and Disadvantaged Communities in Western China * How Joint Action Can Increase Production While Contributing to Poverty Reduction: The Case of Frutika in Paraguay * Poverty Reduction and Millennium Development Goal Localization: A Case Study of Ha Tinh Rural Development Project in Vietnam * Good Practice for Poverty Reduction in Coconut Growing Communities in the Philippines * Part IV: Localization of Millennium Development Goals and Monitoring * Community Driven Development to Improve Livelihoods: The Gemidiriya Project in Sri Lanka * Recent Experience with the Community Voice Card: An Innovative Tool for Assessing Service Delivery for the Millennium Development Goals * The P135 Programme for Socio-economic Development of Communes Facing Extreme Difficulties in Ethnic Minority and Mountainous Areas in Vietnam * Empowering Women through Home-based Income-Earning Opportunities in Malaysia * Part V: Social Safety Nets and Microfinance * Poverty Reduction and Millennium Development Goal Localization: A Case Study of the Income Generation for Vulnerable Group Development Programme in Bangladesh * Beating the Odds: How Progresa/Oportunidades Became Mexico s Major Poverty Alleviation Programme * The Phil-Health Indigent Program: A Locality-Based Health Insurance Programme for the Poor in the Philippines * The VimoSEWA Self Employed Women s Association Microinsurance Programme, India * Part VI: Community Mobilization and Advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals * Sailing the Nile for the Millennium Development Goals: A Yearly Festival of Development, Human Rights and Volunteerism in Egypt * Index

Paul Steele, Neil Fernando and Maneka Weddikkara work at the UNDP Asia and Pacific Regional Centre in Colombo. Paul Steele has edited and co-authored numerous publications and was co-editor of Earthscan‘s Reducing Poverty and Sustaining the Environment (2005).