Working Paper 87
Ricardo Sabates, Stephen Devereux and Pamela Abbott
Concern Worldwide launched a programme called ‘Enhancing the Productive Capacity of Extremely Poor People’ – known as the ‘Graduation Programme’ in this report – in two districts of southern Rwanda in May 2011. The Graduation Programme is designed to support extremely poor households1 through cash transfers to meet their basic needs, skills development to enable them to improve their livelihood options, and savings to increase resilience to shocks, thereby enabling sustainable exits from poverty.
This report presents the findings from a quantitative survey conducted 12 months after 1st cohort participants on Concern Worldwide Rwanda’s Graduation Programme received their first cash transfer, as well as qualitative research conducted a few months later. The monitoring and evaluation (M&E) component of the programme includes a quantitative baseline survey, a ‘first 12 months survey’ conducted 12 months after the first cash transfer is disbursed (while the cash transfers are still ongoing and before the asset transfer and associated livelihood support begins), and qualitative fieldwork.
