| A Business Case Approach to Poverty Impact | | Print | |
Prosperity Initiative works like a business, investing intelligently to maximise its bottom line of impacting poverty. We take a ‘venture capital' investment approach to allocating its resources to ensure maximum ‘poverty impact' return for development funds invested.Corporately, our are target is USD200 per person out of poverty across the full cost of all operations. Our target in the Mekong is 750,000 people out of poverty by 2020. We already have a proven business case for 250,000 people out of poverty in the industrial bamboo sector in NW Viet Nam (now in roll out) and others in the pipeline. Our project cycle to develop pro-poor industries and ensure poverty impact outcomes is a long-term strategic approach, moving through the stages outlined below. We prove the business case for poverty impact of our development investments, stepping iteratively through stages, providing clear decision points for justification and ensuring plans for success are based on evidence.
Identifying the Potential. Our target here is to limit investment at this stage to USD5/potential out of poverty. The objective of is to develop a potential case worthy of further investigation; the anticipated budget for this stage is $50,000 to $400,000. We undertake detailed and sophisticated analysis of whole industry systems from farmers and workers up to the global level. We identify in this process local, national and regional agents of change both public and private that are likely to champion innovation and change in the system. This industry analysis maps jobs and income to the potential effect on poor people's livelihoods. This identification stage takes between 6 - 12 months and has several steps, starting with pre-screening activity to identify potential. Proving the Potential. Our target here is to limit investment at this stage to USD20/potential out of poverty. The objective of this stage is to understand the viability of proposed interventions; therefore, this stage tests various interventions with private and government collaborators and measures the change (ideally poverty impact). A deep and detailed understanding of the poverty impact mechanism needs to emerge from this stage as a basis for design of subsequent programme logic and activities. The anticipated budget for this stage is $100,000 to $2,000,000 and could last up to 2 years. In this stage, we work with change leaders in the system (e.g. progressive businesses and policy leaders) to prove business cases, to implement pilots to address the key constraints and to demonstrate with strong field data the poverty impact case. Roll Out and Exit. The objective here is to implement a programme within a clearly defined programme logic, set of interventions and outcome targets. Since we are operating within a market system, strategic decisions may be made on shorter horizons to address emergent opportunities or threats. Investment in the proving stage and strong knowledge of the sector and actors ensures the capacity for sound decision-making. This stage is expected to take 5 - 15 years, and we would expect to transition out of various roles at the earliest opportunity, with sustainability and efficiency being our key determinants in this decision process. We will continue to measure the impact on poverty after our exit to ensure the real impact of our donors' work is acknowledged so that we can learn for the future. Mekong Bamboo, Impact on Poverty Read more about how we ‘prove' sector potential, integrating demand, competitiveness and poverty impact (pdf, 1.8MB) |
