First Look: Poverty Tools Practicality

This note from Senegal discusses the challenges and lessons that Enterprise Works/Vita (EWV) learned in testing the practicality of USAID poverty tools.

The note presents information about:

• EWV's work in Senegal:
  • Assisting micro, small and medium enterprises to help them generate income and employment;
  • Assist in the stabilization of the region and its economy.
• EWV's eagerness to test the USAID poverty assessment tools.

The note lists the following challenges that EWV surveyors faced in assessing the tools in Senegal:

• The decision to best achieve a representative sample of clients;
• The complexity of the testing goals of the poverty assessment tool survey;
• The need to translate the English questionnaire into French and then into three local languages;
• The flexibility of the notion of household and family in Africa, which made it difficult to answer the question of how many people were there in a household;
• Inflated answers to the question, "how much does the household need per month to live?"
• Respondents' expectations that the survey team would offer them financial help;
• Obtaining answers to questions that were just not applicable to the local context.

The note concludes that in the process of practicality testing:

• EWV gained practical insight from its clients;
• Surveyors were very satisfied with the assessment framework.