Social and Economic Empowerment

Even in today’s world of economic advancement, certain groups are often found to be marginalized by the society at large. Such marginalized people who do not have access to opportunities for becoming self-sufficient, have no other option but to depend on charity or welfare. Their lack of self-sufficiency makes them lose their self-confidence which in turn often leads to psychological and social problems.

Through social and economic empowerment, the basic opportunities which are otherwise denied to the marginalized people are created and made available to them. Social and economic empowerment is usually achieved by encouraging and developing the skills for self-sufficiency with a focus on eliminating the need for relying on charity or welfare of any kind.

Though such empowerment processes are difficult to initiate, IPE has successfully conceptualized and implemented many assignments with focus on social and economic empowerment of the marginalized people of the society. To view a list of our projects in this practice area, please click here. Some of the areas of our practice are:

Slum Development

Found in the urban fringes and often in centres of old cities, these ghettos are often worse than their rural counterparts. IPE works to make life in these slums better for the people by:

Access to basic infrastructure services to the people living there
Addressing issues of land tenure and squatter settlements
Special infrastructure development drives especially to enhance water supply, sanitation, lighting and housing
Economic development including community mobilization, programme design and support
Linkages with education and health services to enable better service and improved quality of life.

We have also helped in developing community based information systems for slums in certain cities to enable appropriate decision making by the officials with respect to the plight of the poor.

Poverty Reduction Policy and Capacity Building

We have worked on developing national and state policies for poverty reduction and have carried out several capacity building measures for their implementation.

Participatory Learning and Appraisal

Participatory Learning and Appraisal (PLA) places emphasis on understanding of people’s own point of view. The underlying idea is that different people perceive and understand reality in different ways and that local knowledge matters. In participatory learning, different innovative approaches and methods are adopted to enable local people to share, enhance and analyse their knowledge of life and conditions in order to plan and act in a rational manner. Methods that are flexibly adjusted to the particular objectives of the process and involves respondents as active participants in drawing up maps, profiles, diagrams or conducting semi-structured interviews and focused discussions are implemented.

Through PLA, we facilitate and enable marginalized people to do their own investigations, analyses, presentations, planning and action, to own the outcome, and to teach outsiders (researchers, planners, policy makers, government officials) by sharing their knowledge. For us PLA is a process involving much more than just appraisal, rather it covers various aspects of participatory learning, planning, action, leading to the evaluation of outcomes.

We have been applying PLA extensively and diligently primarily in impact assessment of development programmes.

Through PLA, only information which will really be used is gathered and the participation of community members from the outset of the process ensures that the collected data are relevant for the purpose of the appraisal. On-the-spot analysis enables to fill knowledge gaps immediately during the field work. PLA thus becomes a continuous learning process for both researchers and community members.

Community mobilisation

Community mobilization is a process where a group of people have transcended their differences to meet on equal terms in order to facilitate a participatory decision-making process. In other words it can be viewed as a process which begins as a dialogue among members of the community for determining who, what, and how issues are decided, and also for providing a scope for everyone to participate in decisions that affect their lives.

Mobilization of community needs systemic approach and herein comes our expertise of srategizing around community organizations which could potentially serve as a means to address their needs.

Economic development

We have been providing technical support in various areas like strategic and planning, access and demand, finance and procurement and organizational development to the health department of states like West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh with the underlying objective of reducing maternal, child and neonatal deaths and thereby increasing life expectancy. Similarly in many of our assignments, our purpose remains to reduce poverty level and improving literacy rates. Our work on restructuring of loss-making public sector enterprises and livelihood programmes has in some way or other contributed towards the improvement in the economic indicators of the nation.

Voice and Accountability

Marginalized sections of people are often excluded from participating in policy design and programmes that have direct impact on their lives. The deciding authorities viz. the central and local government institutions are also neither responsive nor accountable to such poor people. As far as accountability methods are concerned, the focus is now on strengthening the ‘voice’, or capacity, of ordinary citizens such that they are able to directly participate in policy-making processes.

Keeping in mind the changing context of Voice and Accountability work, we have been actively involved in designing and implementing effective voice and accountability interventions and facilitating tools. We work towards ensuring the participation of the intended beneficiaries viz. the weaker classes in decision framing of poverty reduction strategies, poverty and social impact analysis and other participatory approaches to development. Our focus on access and demand separately as an intervention area as part of the assignment of providing technical support to the health sector ensured voice and accountability of the marginalized people in framing of policies like Health Awareness Promotion Strategy (HAPS).

Behaviour Change Communication

Any communication activity whose goal is to help individuals and communities select and practice behavior that will positively impact their health and nutritional status is regarded as Behavior change communication (BCC).

Our teams of experts have been consistently working on several assignments related to BCC. We employ a systematic process beginning with formative research and behavior analysis, followed by communication planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. Audiences are carefully segmented, messages and materials are pre-tested, and both mass media and interpersonal channels are used to achieve defined behavioral objectives. BCC is a major thrust area among the intervention areas taken up by our technical support teams providing technical assistance to the health departments of West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.

Design of Social Safety Nets

Safety nets are part of a broader poverty reduction strategy with focus on social insurance; health, education, and financial services; the provision of utilities and roads; and other policies aimed at reducing poverty and managing risk. The purpose is to prevent the poor or those vulnerable to shocks and poverty from falling below a certain poverty level.

Beneficiary analysis and Satisfaction Surveys

Beneficiary Analysis is undertaken through satisfaction surveys. Such surveys help to estimate whether the benefits are percolating down to the masses as envisaged in various policies. Such surveys help to assess whether public resources are being utilized properly for the benefit of the poor and helps to identify loopholes/bottlenecks in service delivery, if any.

We have conducted Public expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) to ascertain whether public good like drugs are reaching the targeted beneficiaries in public health systems. PETS of mid-day meal in Orissa also helped us determine if the beneficiaries are having access to cooked food.

Poverty Tracking and monitoring systems

Poverty monitoring is understood as the tracking of progress under a Poverty Reduction Strategy. This implies assessing whether the inputs are being delivered as planned and the outcomes are being achieved as expected.

Poverty monitoring system includes collection of necessary data and its analysis followed by dissemination and feedback into the policy process. We have undertaken a large no. of poverty monitoring studies where we were in charge of overall management and coordination of the activities that comprise poverty monitoring system.