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Introduction to PPAs
Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) is a process of consulting poor women and men about their well-being, livelihood and experiences with services delivered by government and other institutions. The aim is to include the views of poor and marginalized people, who are usually left out in the planning process, into the formulation of poverty reduction strategies, the identification of poverty reduction programmes and projects and allocation of financial resources.

PPAs differ from conventional surveys in a number of ways. The most important characteristic of a PPA is that it allows poor and vulnerable people to analyse their own situation and propose solutions to their priority problems. Various participatory methodologies are used to capture the different dimensions of poverty that are usually missed by income and expenditure measurement of poverty.

In Namibia, the studies are carried out by small research teams, which visit about six communities in a region. In each community, the research team stays for a week and interact with the communities on a daily basis, to discuss a number of issues, including how community members perceive poverty and vulnerability, the perceived causes of poverty and vulnerability and to analyse trends in poverty related problems.

Communities also come up with characteristics of a poor person or household and what resources are available in the community at large and to the various well-being groups to pursue a livelihood. Classification of households into different well-being categories is based on the communities’ own criteria. Whilst these may be a subjective measure, it broadens the analysis of poverty by capturing other dimensions.

People are also given the opportunity to discuss which institutions and services (e.g. schools, clinics, water supply etc.) are important to them and how they perceive the quality of service delivery.

For some exercises depending on design and purpose, the community is sub-divided into smaller groups to engage in extensive discussions to get the views of all the different sub-groups (male, females, youth, different well-being groups, etc.) in the community on the issue being discussed.

Some advantages of the PPAs are that poverty reduction programmes are more responsive to the concerns of poor people. Communities become proactive members of their development, in that they begin to take initiative to address poverty related problems that do not need external resources. The process also promotes partnership between decision makers, service providers and beneficiaries of development programmes.
Communities also come up with characteristics of a poor person or household and what resources are available in the community and to the various well-being groups to pursue a livelihood.