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Project Information

OPM managed the design and implementation of Pakistan’s Participatory Poverty Assessment, one of the largest and most ambitious PPA’s undertaken. The purpose of the Pakistan PPA was to record the experiences and concerns of the poor in order to initiate a national dialogue on poverty and identify more effective forms of public action to reduce it.

The PPA had four outputs:

1. an improved understanding of actions that may be expected to make a significant difference to the livelihoods of poor people;
2. the involvement of poor communities with public, private, and non-governmental organisations in a process that critically examined different interventions, institutional arrangements and social structures, and their contribution to the goal of poverty reduction;
3. the identification of activities to be undertaken by the participating organisations in the light of the understandings acquired and linkages established; and
4. the establishment at federal and province level, and in selected districts, of activities to follow-up the PPA and to monitor progress with poverty reduction.

The PPA was located in the Poverty Section of the Planning Commission and in each of Pakistan’s provinces and areas worked through a steering committee chaired under Planning and Development. Fieldwork and follow-up in each province was co-ordinated by an NGO with experience in poverty research and PRA methods. Other partners included the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) whose support included advice on methodology and SEBCON who provided a range of inputs from design through to dissemination.

The PPA findings at province and federal level have been used extensively in the development of the country’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).