Learning from Different Approaches: Grameen Foundation's Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest Pilot

I'm very thrilled to share a blog post that was recently published on the website of a prominent economic development initiative, Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), funded by the World Bank. CGAP is an independent policy and research center dedicated to advancing financial access for the world's poor. It is supported by over 30 development agencies and private foundations who share a common mission to alleviate poverty. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP provides market intelligence, promotes standards, develops innovative solutions and offers advisory services to governments, financial service providers, donors, and investors. The full post can be accessed here or on the Grameen Foundation blog. Happy reading!

Luckshmi Sivalingam, Program Officer within SfP, overseas the Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest (LPP) project at Grameen Foundation and has been working with the field team in Gaya since April of 2010 to design the livelihood and financial products, services and methodology comprising the integrated livelihoods model.

Grameen Foundation’s Solutions for the Poorest program has been working since last year to implement its own “ultra-poor “program , which takes inspiration from the BRAC graduation model, Fonkoze’s Ti Kredi program, and BASIX’s Livelihood Triad Strategy, as well as social enterprises that are experimenting with models to reach poor AND poorest households sustainably. The model we are testing – the ‘Integrated Livelihoods Model for the Poorest’ – combines financial services and livelihood support, sequentially providing these services to our target households as they gain confidence and momentum in the program. Our services are designed to have some measure of cost recovery as we aim to build a program that makes business sense for a double bottom line institution to implement.

Sunita Devi, a participant in Grameen Foundation's Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest Pilot

The current pilot – dubbed “Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest” – is operating in partnership with BASIX India’s The Livelihood School (TLS), in Gaya district in the Indian state of Bihar and is reaching two hundred very poor households. We designed and implemented a composite targeting tool to ensure the inclusion of households currently excluded from microfinance services and government social welfare schemes. Another fifty households of similar demographics are being monitored to make a comparative assessment of the impact of the products and services against a set of socio-economic indicators.

Developing a process to define and identify who the poorest are was a challenging one. Who are the “very poor”? What does poverty look like in their context, and what are its propagators? What are the needs of the very poor to propel them on a pathway out of poverty? It seems like it was only yesterday that I was in Gaya for the second time, working closely with the BASIX TLS team, trudging through our target villages to design and implement a targeting methodology to help us identify the poorest households and help us answer some of these key questions. Last August, our team of three slogged through kilometers of muddy or flooded lanes through villages absent of sewage and waste management systems. The monsoon rains, albeit short-lived, were particularly heavy those few days we worked to test the targeting process with a sample group of the target population before the final process would be scaled up across the entire project area.

We began by holding a community meeting to share the project goal and objectives with the entire village and its leaders before engaging in Participatory Wealth Ranking (PWR), an interactive and inclusive method of rural appraisal, whereby the community members themselves define what poverty means in their own context and categorize individuals according to local definitions. Shortlisted households in the bottom wealth category were visited individually and further surveyed to collect the Progress out of Poverty Index® (PPI®) score, a tool commissioned by Grameen Foundation to determine the likelihood of a household or individual falling above or below a specified poverty line. A household survey also captured a range of data, including their cash flow, livelihood portfolio, food security, health, and other indicators. The final data was measured against selection criteria that helped us identify the poorest households in a given community.

Such a multilayered filtering process ensures that interventions are reaching households not only living on less than $1.25/day, but also well below localized definitions of poverty. While an institution can target clients of varying poverty levels, the products and services it offers must be customized to meet the unique needs of these clients. Poverty targeting can strengthen market research outcomes and better inform institutions on how to service different gaps through appropriately designed products and services. In the case of the ‘Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest’ pilot project, this understanding proved invaluable in executing subsequent key activities such as product and service design and identification of viable delivery mechanisms.

For more information, you can refer to the full use case on this process here or on Grameen Foundation’s Solutions for the Poorest website.

Orissa: A glimpse into the past, perhaps history in the making

Imagine the land of India as it once was, not as a single nation, but as a mosaic of a plethora of kingdoms and tribes whose people and traditions had not yet been touched by even Brahminic or Vedic influences. Imagine a time when the divinity of the cosmos, earth, and all within it was an acknowledged force that was inseparable from soul to soul of all life, whether it be human, flora, fauna, or the forces of nature. This animistic and/or pantheistic life philosophy, prevalent in indigenous traditions, embeds, then, a moral imperative to respect and recognize the life force or spirit in all. Hinduism today, I believe, is predominantly a hybrid of this indigenous outlook coupled with the Vedic philosophy. The Hindu greeting, ‘Namaste/Namaskar/Vanakkum,’ for example, literally and very humbly means ‘I bow to you’ and essentially expresses one’s acknowledgment of the same divine force in the other. The palms pressed together symbolize this concept of oneness. As I traveled through the eastern Indian state of Orissa (commonly referred to as Odisha by the Orya people), I observed in awe what appeared to be history unfolding itself all over again—the transgression from the untainted, animistic tribal populations to the in-between state when one world has touched the other to finally, today’s India as I’ve known it.

There are roughly sixty-four tribes residing in Orissa, each with its own traditions, rituals, style of attire and décor. Women still drape their saris as they have done for hundreds of years without the blouses introduced by the Mughals and the British. Many other tribes live unclothed and use beads, grass, and other “cloths” of nature of various local significance and symbolism. The predominant tribes are the Desia Kundh, Koyas, Oraon, and Dongoria Hill tribes, who gather and trade once a week in a common market in each of the major tribal centers. They survive off of agriculture, hunting, and fishing, and the produce is sold at these markets along with tobacco, jewelry, and other locally produced items. One morning, we visited the Majhiguda market about 40 kilometers from the small town of Rayagoda. As I walked through the market observing in fascination at scenes that seemed to come straight out of the past, I was hesitant to take out my camera and erect that barrier between what felt like two worlds. After some thought, I did manage to capture a few images when granted approval by the subject. Often, the Dongoria women requested no photos be taken of them for fear that each photo snapped reduced their lifespan in some proportion. It was an opportunity to mingle and immerse myself in a traditional, vibrant marketplace of what I had thought was of a time past. Though we drove hours and hours each day exploring the different tribes and their ways of life, the tribal culture, in its purest state, can only be found in the far more interior south of the state, moving towards Chhattisgarh, which required far more time than I had made time for on this trip. But, who knows for how much longer? In the villages we did visit of the Desia Kundh, I noticed an interesting fusion of indigenous and Vedic practices. As government welfare schemes and modern technology slowly creep into these regions, so do the traditions and ways of the old gradually dissolve or assimilate with the modern.

Dongoria and Desia Kundh Tribal Groups at the Majhiguda Market and Rayagoda:

Shortly before visiting Rayagoda, we had broken journey in the small town of Gopalpur on the Bay of Bengal. Gopalpur is a local tourist destination which attracts visitors with its tiny boardwalk and long stretch of beaches. When we reached there, I found it to be more of a struggling, dilapidated little town. I hadn’t realized how close we were to the Andhra Pradesh border until I observed the large fisherman community residing on the beaches. If they hadn’t started indulging in the local toddy liquor and passed out in the sand, I made attempts to communicate with them in Hindi. When I realized that they didn’t understand Hindi, I asked if they knew Orya, and before I knew it, they were expressing to me that they were from Andhra Pradhesh in their mother tongue of Telugu. Many Telangana people live along Orissa’s coast, as their livelihood is rooted, or shall I say, anchored in the sea. Each evening, they sell the day’s catch which can be enjoyed fresh in nearby restaurants or transported in ice-filled storage boxes to neighboring cities and states. After three months in landlocked Bihar, I completely indulged in fresh, delicious prawn and crab curry at every opportunity.

Before starting the drive out of Bhubaneshwar to visit some of the tribal groups, my driver was adamant that we stop to worship at the Kali temple just on the outskirts of the city, a tradition followed by most travelers for protection and to preempt any potential calamities. I was pleasantly surprised by the good conditions of the main roads until we reached the periphery of the tribal areas some 40 kilometers outside of the capital. The state of the infrastructure degraded the further interior we traveled, taking up to 7-8 hours just to travel 150-200 kilometers. Our first stop of the day was to Chilika Lagoon, the largest lagoon in India and the second in the world. From here, we took an old wooden boat to Kali Jai Island, known for its abundance of rare species of flora and fauna as well as an old temple, again dedicated to Kali. Here is one of many places where one can observe the transition stage from tribal to current practices of acknowledging the divine and practicing Vedic rituals to evoke life into the Kali deity. As I exited the moolasthaanam, where the main deity is housed, I was instructed to tie a set of black and red bangles, a part of my prasaadam, onto a part of the temple as I thought of something I would like to either leave behind or realize once I left the grounds. A man struck my head with a bouquet of peacock feathers “to ward off evil eye” as I made my departure from the main shrine. As I looked upon the external face of the moolasthaanam, called the vimaanam, I was surprised to see one of the oldest symbols of the divine to be discovered on Indian land, a yoni, symbolic of the female or life force. As we traversed through Orissa, I was soon able to identify the older temples from the new by this symbol. It was mind blowing.

Orissa is a mystical place saturated with some of India’s most stunning architecture and art forms. The land is referred to several times throughout the Hindu epics, the Ramayanam and the Mahabharatham, and in the 3rd century BC, flourished as part of a Jaina empire. Significantly, it is also where the bloody battle between Kalinga and Akhoka of the Maurya Empire transpired and ultimately turned Ashoka onto the path of non-violence, leading to his embrace of the Buddhist philosophy. Monasteries, temples, and other structures from the 3rd century BC through the 12th century AD pepper the state’s landscape, mostly so in its capital city, Bhubaneshwar, aptly referred to as the Temple City. The temples of Orissa are unique in structure, erected vertically in a rectangular shape before rounding over at its peak. The entire façade is covered with an overwhelmingly intricate set of carvings depicting scenes from the various Hindu texts. Most notable, however, are the erotic carvings, primarily from the Kama Sutra, that I’ve only seen on the temples of Khajuraho. There are several interpretations or explanations of these images that range from philosophical to mythological-cum-superstitious ones. As I walked through each temple complex, sliding my hands against their intricately carved surfaces, looking up in awe as many peaked high into the skies, my breath as well as my mind were taken away momentarily.

Udyagiri Caves, Bhubaneshwar:

Lingaraj Temple, Bhubaneshwar

Gangeshwar/Yamunneswara Temple Complex:

Parashurameshwar Temple, Bhubaneshwar:

Sidheshwar Temple Complex, Bhubaneshwar:

Mukhteshwar Temple Complex, Bhubaneshwar:

Hirapur Yogini Temple:

Chilika Lagoon:

Gopalpur, Bay of Bengal:

The next stop was Puri, the holiest of Orissa’s cities, where the renowned Jagannath temple is situated and attracts thousands of pilgrims each year. About a half an hour’s drive from there is the most spectacular of Orissa’s architectural feats, the Konark Temple, in honor of Konark or Surya, the Sun god. They say it took twelve thousand sculptors twelve years to complete this stunning structure, full of symbols and carvings. On the way to Puri, we stopped at the village of Raghurajpur, home to the community of Pattachitra (silk) and Pothichithra (palm leaf engraving) artists. I was surprised to learn that all such paintings come from artists from this single village, which is now deemed a heritage site. I met with master craftsman, Maga Nayak, whose sons are also now engaged in this art form, which like many ancient arts is passed down from one generation to the next, skills and patience honed from a young age to generate some of the world’s most revered artists. As I saw the master painter engaged in creating a Pothichithra (engraving followed by painting on palm leaves, the ancient method of record keeping), I was nearly overwhelmed to tears by the beauty of the art form- the patience, devotion, and skill required to create something of unfathomable beauty. After this experience, each time I laid my eyes upon a finished product, I loved it deeply and respected both the art and its creator. A short morning encounter transformed into a day’s immersion with the artist’s family as we discussed and reviewed art before enjoying a thali lunch on their rooftop, surrounded by the green and calm of the palm trees and the lagoon. As I departed for Puri, we passed by a small river running alongside the village, where crème colored garments dried on the surface of a small peninsula protruding into the river. The artist’s son relayed to me that the revered Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, one of the most beloved saints and devotees of Krishna, stayed here for some time with his devotees during their travel through the region. Another tiny piece of history was stamped on my experiences venturing through this magical state.

Guardian of the Jaganaath Temple, Puri (photos not allowed)

Master craftsman, Maga Nayak, in Raghurajpur

Konark Temple:

After only six days of exploration through Orissa, I left feeling it was one with immense depth, full of unforgettable interactions and memories, and yet, I also felt I had barely scratched the surface of what the land and its people had to offer. It was an accidental, last minute trip that was meant to substitute the one planned in Darjeeling and Sikkim. Last month’s earthquake, its epicenter being in Sikkim, changed that plan, and ultimately, me along with it.