India is home to 10% (~65 million) of the global extreme poor population, which makes it a country with 2^nd largest population of poor. The poor families live on less than 2 meals a day and earn less than Rs. 34 per day (annual income is less than Rs.12,000). Since they spend 80% of their income on food, they have meagre or no savings.   These families tend to be socially withdrawn and excluded from communities.

While Rs. 14.5 lakh crores are being spent by the government on rural poverty alleviation, the benefits are not necessarily reaching the extreme poor. In the current ecosystem, there are microfinance and government programs to service the poor only if they are engaged in productive economic activity. But in reality, the extreme poor have no productive asset or income generating activity. There are government safety net programs that generally tend to reach the visible, making the last mile reach ineffective. The extreme poor are often unregistered, hence they do not receive or access government social protection plans.

The/Nudge, in partnership with BRAC, is implementing an integrated micro-entrepreneurship program to help extreme poor families come out of poverty.

The key elements of the program are-

1. Selecting and targeting: careful selection of the excluded extreme poor families through participatory appraisal and PWR (Poverty Wealth Ranking) and PAT (Poverty Assessment Tool) surveys
2. Social and financial inclusion: formation of women led SHGs, initiate savings activities and prepare for credit absorption
3. Consumption support: provision of stipend/food transfer to provide breathing space to focus on building skills and planning
4. Livelihood planning: creation of a diversified and customised plan for each family to increase productivity and decrease risk
5. Asset transfer and training: provision of physical asset or grant along with technical skills to initiate economic activity
6. Life skills coaching: weekly coaching through individual and group level visits on health, nutrition, financial literacy, etc.

This is an evidence based program that has proven to reduce extreme poverty globally. The/Nudge has done extensive research and initiated this project in Jharkhand, where we have identified 500 extremely poor families. Additionally, we have partnered with local NGOs and livelihood partners. The goal is to sustainably impact over 50,000 extreme poor families in the next 5 years by scaling to states of Chattisgarh and Odisha.

Special Features of the Project

• Graduation approach was designed and launched by BRAC in 2002 
• RCT based impact measurement showed significant improvement 
• CGAP and Ford Foundation launched 10 pilots in 8 countries 

 Historical outcome evidence-

• Increase in annual income
• Increase in asset value
• Increase in savings
• Food security
• Engaged in diversified livelihoods
• Improved confidence