Mapping of stakeholders engaged in Public Works Programmes (PWPs)

Abstract

Public works programmes (PWPs) have received increasing attention as a social protection intervention due to their perceived benefits of tackling poverty by addressing basic consumption needs whilst improving public goods and community infrastructure. This helpdesk report maps organisational and individual actors engaged in PWPs in development and humanitarian contexts from a policy, implementation and influencing perspective. The multilateral agencies appear to dominate influence of PWPs usage within the sector with the World Bank Group supplying the majority of programmatic funding through multi-donor funds and the UN agencies adopting these practices in a number of international initiatives to achieve sector objectives within developing countries. Bilateral agencies also utilised PWPs with USAID adopting these practices in its food assistance programme, DFAT through its social protection strategy in the Indo Pacific region and GIZ in programmes focussed on refugee communities in humanitarian contexts. The report begins with a brief review of the methodology used for literature searching and an overview of PWP funding/implementation models. This is followed by a brief review of political considerations associated with stakeholder engagement before the mapping key stakeholders across multilateral agencies, donors, and academic/research institutes. K4D helpdesk reports provide summaries of current research, evidence and lessons learned. This report was commissioned by the UK Department for International Development