Social Safety Nets and the Extreme Poor: Learning from a participatory pro-poor governance approach. Shiree Working Paper No. 2

Abstract

CARE Bangladesh started the implementation of the Social and Economic Transformation of the Ultra Poor (SETU) project in March 2009 in the Unions of Nilphamari, Lalmonirhat, Gaibandha and Rangpur. Through solidarity building and empowering the poor and marginalised communities, the project is working to collectively address the underlying causes of extreme poverty (seen by the project as economic, social and political exclusion). This working paper shares SETU’s approach to addressing extreme poverty with a wide audience of practitioners, policy makers and academics. SETU’s participatory inclusive governance approach has broadened and deepened citizens’ influence in the decisions that affect their lives, seeing this as a right (and hence an end in itself), and also as a key strategy for “graduating” people out of conditions of extreme poverty and chronic vulnerability. The research has examined the effects of an inclusive governance approach on extremely poor people’s access to Government social safety nets and the impacts that these have on their livelihoods