Poverty Outreach Working Group

Mid-Year Meeting

Breakout Concept (assumes roughly four hour timeframe)

Desired Outcome: A potential framework of ways that microfinance/microenterprise development

can effectively reach and positively impact people living on less than $1.25/day (PPP).

Intermediate Objectives: Achieve consensus on the following questions:

 What does it mean to live on less than $1.25/day? What are the reasons people find
themselves in this situation? How do these characteristics affect access to financial and
enterprise development services?
 Why don’t existing MF or MED organizations and projects do a good job of reaching this
population? Why don’t very poor people access these services?

Activities:
I. Poverty Frameworks – 60 minutes
a. GF to present commonly used “categories” to define the poorest (e.g., level of assets,
physical location, occupation, poverty traps) based on our research (see attached table)
b. Each poverty category will be placed on a large flip chart sheet and placed around the
room. Participants given Post-its and asked to identify ways these categories inhibit the
poorest from accessing MF or MED services, and place the Post It on the appropriate
category.
c. Regroup and discuss
II. “Logic Trees” – 90 to 120 minutes
a. GF to present two fundamental questions: “Why don’t MF or MED projects do a good
job of reaching the very poor?” and “Why don’t very poor people do a good job of
accessing MF and MED services?” In this way, we can separately address the supply and
demand side of the issue
b. Depending on the size of the group and the amount of time allotted, participants will
create an “issue” or “logic” tree addressing each of these questions (see photo example
below)
c. Regroup and discuss
III. Conclusions – 45 minutes
a. Bringing together the two activities – what are characteristics of poor people and how
aren’t they currently accessing MF or MED services, begin to brainstorm a potential
framework that looks at ways very poor people currently access such services or could
be accessing such services
b. Discuss next steps of this work for the POWG

Materials needed: Flip chart paper, masking tape, post-its, and either a large white board or a large
amount of flip charts (and wall space) for the logic trees.