In India, researchers partnered with Bandhan, a local microfinance institution. The study focused on households with an able-bodied woman that were not associated with any microfinance institution and received below a certain threshold of government aid. Households commonly had little land, no non-land productive assets, and relied on informal labor for income. Bandhan further narrowed eligibility by conducting a participatory rural appraisal to identify the poorest community members.

Rarely has an antipoverty strategy been evaluated so thoroughly as the Graduation Approach, the holistic livelihood development program popularized by BRAC. The Graduation Approach includes five or more components designed to ensure that beneficiaries—typically the extreme poor—are able to manage or avoid new shocks while finding a pathway out of poverty.

This bulletin summarizes the results from seven randomized evaluations of the Graduation approach, a multifaceted livelihood program for the ultra-poor. This particular approach was designed by BRAC and has since been adapted in eight countries with support from the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and the Ford Foundation. Researchers conducted randomized evaluations of the program in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, and Peru.

The ‘SPEC Webinar 8 - Integrating the Graduation Approach with Government Social Protection and Employment Generation Programs: Sharing experiences from Asia and Africa’ took place on 27 September 2018.

“Graduation in an Urban Refugee Context: A Technical Guide” has been prepared to offer guidance to organizations planning to implement the Graduation Approach in an urban context for refugees and their host communities. The document can be used to support the design and implementation of Graduation programs as part of a comprehensive economic inclusion strategy for refugees and their host communities in urban and peri-urban areas.

Climate change is a threat multiplier for the poor, amplifying existing vulnerabilities such as poverty, hunger, and poor health. Nearly half the world’s population are estimated to be highly vulnerable to climate change but do not have the means and conditions to adapt. The poorest parts of the world, and the poorest people within them, are the most severely affected.

It was with that in mind that Zita Akwero, Village Enterprise’s Uganda Regional Manager, highlighted (during a recent webinar to recognize International Women’s Day) how TaroWorks’ offline mobile field service app, Salesforce.com and the data they collect and analyze are helping empower both the women hired by Village Enterprise to act as business mentors and women in the poverty alleviation program who the mentors train and advise.

COVID-19 is accentuating the risks facing an increasing number of poor and vulnerable individuals and households in a myriad of ways. In many countries, the pandemic and associated lockdowns have had devastating impacts across several dimensions, including health (e.g. increased mortality and morbidity), economic (e.g. job/livelihood loss or reduced earnings, and some supply shortages), and social (e.g. negative coping mechanisms, disruptions to services such as education, immunisation and other healthcare).

Social Protection for Employment - Community​ (SPEC) is pleased to share this resource matrix to facilitate easy access to publications on social protection and employment. It has now 200 entries, with the details, including file name, author(s)/ presenter(s), category, focus of the materials, description, publication year, and links of the publications provided. We hope this matrix will be helpful not only for the SPEC members but also for everyone interested in the topics of social protection and employment worldwide.

Financial inclusion is a catalyst towards growth and opportunity. It is therefore not surprising that it features as a target in eight of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. It is associated with reducing poverty, increasing resilience, and improving economic growth, innovation, and family well-being.

In order to alleviate poverty and food insecurity in Malawi – one of the poorest countries in the world – in 2016 the Government of Malawi, the Mwanza District Council, and COMSIP Cooperative Union, with the support of the GIZ Social Protection Programme, designed and implemented the Economic Empowerment Pilot Project in the district of Mwanza. The programme targets ultra-poor and labour-constrained households in six randomly selected areas of the district.

The present study assesses the impacts of an innovative pilot project called the Tingathe Economic Empowerment Project (EEP) in Malawi, designed by GIZ. The project targets ultra-poor and labour-constrained households. Designed as a cluster-randomised-control-trial, it provides to different village clusters a) a lump-sum transfer; b) financial and business training; or, c) both a lump-sum transfer and training.

This handbook, “Employment Promotion in Development

This publication shares the experiences of five disability-inclusive employment promotion projects commissioned by the BMZ. They use different strategic approaches and measures, depending on the national context, culture, environment, societal characteristics etc. Therefore, they are no blueprints and replication without adaptation to the respective context is not recommended. Instead, these examples provide GIZ programmes and development practitioners orientation for disability-inclusive project design and implementation.

Developing a digital and integrated information system is a crucial step in building a national social protection system. It enables the flow and management of information within the social protection sector and between social protection and other sectors such as education, health, agriculture, humanitarian and disaster risk management (DRM).

This paper aims to promote learning emerging from the early policy response to the Covid-19 crisis on social protection crisis response effectiveness and on opportunities and risks for longer-term social protection strengthening. It centres on the experience of low- and middle-income countries and on measures taken in the initial phases of the crisis, between the declaration of the pandemic, in March 2020, and early 2021.

Based on a literature review and case studies of various urban cash transfer schemes that were implemented in response to Covid-19 across LMICs (with primary case studies from Madagascar,
Peru and Nigeria), this paper explores the successes and challenges of implementing cash transfers in urban settings in response to a large, covariate shock. It also considers the expected longer term implications and lessons learned for building capacity to respond to future shocks and for social protection system-strengthening more broadly.

This paper analyses the operational approaches that selected LIC and MIC governments took to maintain existing cash transfer provision and to deliver additional shock-responsive cash assistance during the pandemic in the year 2020. It combines a rapid literature review with case studies on government cash transfer provision during the crisis in four countries: Nigeria, Peru, Sri Lanka and Togo.

This paper examines the extent to which social protection responses to the crisis have recognised and addressed the gendered impacts of the crisis. Drawing on case studies from South Africa and Kerala, India, the paper looks at the design and implementation features of the social protection response from a gender perspective, and offers policy recommendations for strengthening gender in social protection and crisis response in the future.

Social protection programs are needed more than ever during periods of social upheaval, but are also likely to be even harder to implement successfully. Furthermore, social upheaval makes measuring the impact of such policies all the more difficult. We study the impact of a multi-faceted social protection program, often referred to as a “graduation” model program, in Yemen during a period of civil unrest. We are unable to measure outcomes for four years, thus much remains unknown about what transpired in the intermediary time.