Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook -Hardcover

About the Book: Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook Poverty will not be reduced on a large scale without tappinginto the energy, skills, and motivation of the millions of poorpeople around the world. The book offers a framework forempowerment that focuses on increasing poor peoples freedom ofchoice and action to shape their own lives. This approach requiresthree societal changes: a change in mindset, from viewing poorpeople as the problem to viewing them as essential partners inreducing poverty; a change in the relationship between poor peopleand formal systems, enabling them to participate in decisions thataffect their lives; and a change in formal and informalinstitutions to make them more responsive to the needs andrealities of poor people. Based on analysis of experiences from around the world, thesourcebook identifies four key elements to support empowerment ofpoor people: information, inclusion/participation, accountability,and local organizational capacity. This framework is applied tofive areas of action to improve development effectiveness. Theseare: provision of basic services, improved local governance,improved national governance, pro-poor market development, andaccess to justice and legal aid. This Sourcebook also offers twenty "Tools and Practices, "focusing on a wide range of topics to encourage the empowerment ofthe poor from poor peoples enterprises, information andcommunication technologies to diagnostic tools including corruptionsurveys and citizen report cards.