Micro Interventions for Poverty Alleviation: The Philippine Case

In the paper, the authors review five micro-intervention programs for poverty alleviation in the Philippines, to examine whether such programs have direct or indirect impact and to what extent. The authors also provide a review of the frameworks, development performance in the last twenty-five years and other initiatives for the analysis of these initiatives.

The micro interventions discussed in this paper can be categorized into:

• Wage Employment;
• Training only for entrepreneurial development;
• Community training capabilities programs;
• Livelihood-cum-training programs;
• Social services delivery programs.

The target beneficiaries varied from unemployed/underemployed, to out-of-school youth, community development worker, land less rural worker, micro entrepreneur, women and many more. The authors believe that despite the diversity of the programs and the target groups, many principles can be learned:

• Interventions that directly address specific need, or are temporary, are easier to administer;
• Many projects often failed to provide for time and resources required for social preparation for disadvantaged groups;
• Trained, specialized and motivated manpower is required to implement development programs;
• Reliability of the channel through which funds are disbursed has a huge impact on the actual success of the program;
• In order to ensure their success, livelihood projects need to be market oriented;
• Serious and frequent reviews of poverty alleviation programs must be done.