According to the World Bank, the international poverty line stands at $1.25 a day, whereas the daily average earnings of the extreme poor in Bangladesh, approximately 25 million people, is less than $0.50. Extremely poor families exhibit a high degree of chronic and severe deprivation. In most cases, their low income is linked to climatic vulnerability as well as a lack of employment and secure shelter, low literacy, inaccessibility to basic services, and low community involvement. The elderly, the disabled, female-headed households, and minority groups are disproportionately high among the extreme poor.
Female-headed households are more common among the poorest because as the pressures of scarcity increase, often times the more economically able-bodied men of the families abandon their wives to manage a living for themselves. The women are often left to feed their children (and usually their dependent, elderly parents) though they have no job or skills or crafts to sell. They are utterly marginalised and excluded. They are worse off than the poor who are at the bottom of the economic ladder, because they are not on the ladder at all.
The good news is that with a small amount of support, these families can join the mainstream economy, and from there, they can slowly begin to climb out of extreme poverty to prosperity. I work at Shiree, a livelihoods program that gives out these bits of support in the form of assets and the necessary training needed to manage the assets.
On average, a transfer of Tk20,000 (or $250) is enough to inject an earning capacity into a family – but this alone is not enough. As extremely poor people have multiple vulnerabilities, they require additional support in the form of counselling, childcare support, education on nutrition and sanitation, market linkage, and linkage with public service-providers.
Furthermore, unless a family creates at least two or more sources of income with their asset injection, and develop some form of savings, they remain too vulnerable to succeed. With these additional support mechanisms in place, it is estimated that within a year, an extremely poor family may make the transformational leap out of extreme poverty.
However, not all families can make this leap. Often, families are female-headed and loaded with dependents (infants, elderly parents). Other times, families that are progressing well suffer a shock such as the illness of a family member, a natural disaster, or theft, and this wipes out any gains they made. This often leads to the distressed sale of assets and a nosedive back into extreme poverty. To ensure that these struggling families receive adequate attention so that “no one is left behind,” we need to monitor all of our beneficiaries.
A traditional baseline survey of a sample of households, followed by an annual progress survey, is not sufficient to meet our needs. As such, we partnered with tech superstars, mPower, to develop a “Change Monitoring System” that allows real-time monitoring of all our beneficiaries.
The digital survey, which focuses on beneficiary self-assessment of change and voice recordings, is administered by the field staff using software-equipped mobile phones that automatically transmit beneficiary data to Shiree’s central online program database which is available to all for monitoring and evaluation.
This technology makes it possible to identify trends, customise and target support when and where necessary and manage supplementary packages. It enhances our ability to make strategic decisions at a fraction of the cost (in terms of money and time) required by traditional, paper-based survey systems. Using this new platform, the field staff can gather data quickly with ease and accuracy and NGOs are better able to analyse the impact of their projects.
Using CMS 2 last week, I identified and visited two families that were struggling despite the support we had given them. They were both living in remote parts of Dacope. It turned out they were both Aila victims. The assets they received from Shiree helped for a while, but they had both sold off their assets over a year ago to meet emergency demands. One family’s head member suffered from typhoid and they spent their money on treatment. The second family faced loss of shelter due to river erosion four times, and their money was used up in relocating over and over again.
This highlights one of the challenges in asset-transfers as a way out of extreme poverty where external vulnerability is high. We are now looking for ways to connect at least one member of each of those families to skills training so they may seek jobs in Khulna or Dhaka. We continue to search for private sector partners to work with, so if you’re reading this article and are interested in exploring how you can help, please do get in touch.
Digital technology has been critical in helping us identify families in need of support so supplementary funds may be used in a targeted and effective manner. This tool can significantly contribute to the efficient and transparent use of funds for the eradication of extreme poverty from Bangladesh and all other countries of the world. However, we must continue to encourage industrial expansion and innovative entrepreneurialism that creates jobs in rural and remote areas of Bangladesh, otherwise even with cutting-edge technology, it will be difficult to bring about sustainable change.
