Learning from the Extreme Poor: Participatory Approaches to Fostering Child Health in Madagascar
August 2007
Caroline Blanchard, Xavier Godinot, Chantal Laureau, and Quentin Wodon
World Bank: Findings
Definitions of poverty in developing countries used by most development organizations focus on household income or consumption that falls below a given threshold, such as one dollar per capita per day, and on other quantified indicators. While such definitions have the merit of providing a standard by which to measure progress, the very poor use quite different terms and ideas to communicate what extreme poverty means to them.
Extreme poverty results not only from insufficient financial resources but from a lack of basic security in many different areas, including education, employment, housing, and health care, as well as social exclusion. Left to the side in civic, social, and cultural life, and in political decision making, very poor people are often considered ignorant and even incapable of thinking, because they have had no opportunity to gain skill in expression through education. The experience of contempt and exclusion—severely attacking self-confidence—is deep among the poorest, whether they live in rich or poor countries. Very few people listen to them.
“We impose outside interpretations on them that prevent them from reflecting on their own lives,” suggests Joseph Wresinski, who founded the International Movement ATD Fourth World, which focuses on the very poor. ATD Fourth World has been persistent over the last 50 years in its effort to engage political leaders the world over, as well as international development institutions (including the World Bank), in the fight against extreme poverty. ATD Fourth World is determined that these institutions should truly recognize the needs of people in situation of extreme poverty, but even more that they should listen directly to their voices. ATD would also like to see its spirit of respect for the poor spread more widely, so that top-down, hasty, and untested approaches and development projects do not further disrupt the fragile and tenuous lives of poor communities. Theirs is a call for an approach that builds on the consent and measured reflection of those who poverty programs purport to target.
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