MAYOUX, L. (2003)
From Marginalisation to Empowerment: Towards a New Approach in Small Enterprise Development
http://www.intercooperation.ch/sed/2003/wks-sed-and-empowerment/presentations/mayoux.pdf
enterprise development/ empowerment/ pro-poor development/
enabling environments
In the late 1990s, and particularly in the current
century, there has been increasing international agreement
on the importance of ' pro-poor growth '. There has
also been increasing agreement that any coherent strategy
for pro-poor growth and wealth creation must include
small enterprise development. However small enterprise
development is not necessarily pro-poor. Small enterprises
are very diverse and small entrepreneurs include not
only extremely poor people but also skilled consultants
like the author, with very different opportunities
and constraints. Power relations are integral to the
ways in which economic negotiations are conducted at
all levels. Class, gender and ethnic inequalities in
power and resources are key determinants of which people
are able to take advantage of economic supply and demand
factors, and of the relative balance between market
supply and demand itself. They therefore determine
where values are allocated at different levels of production
and market chains. Ultimately most markets within which
small-scale entrepreneurs operate are structured by
international inequalities in bargaining power and
resources in International ‘Free’ Trade
Agreements which continue protection for large-scale
Northern interests.
Empowerment must therefore be an integral part of any
strategy for pro-poor growth. Small enterprise development
which does not include strategies to address power
inequalities is unlikely to be successful in benefiting
significant numbers of poor people. Most will continue
to be consigned to insecure, low income subsistence
enterprises. The very poor are likely to be even further
disadvantaged through increasingly unequal competition
in the markets on which they depend for survival. This
is not only a disaster for people themselves. It also
slows local and national economic development, not
only of the small-scale agricultural and enterprise
sectors, but the medium and large enterprises which
depend on them for inputs, production and local distribution.
Small enterprise development which does not address
empowerment concerns will also fail to comply with
the cross-cutting commitments of development agencies.
However, although the term ‘empowerment’ is frequently found in official documents and programme promotional material, the implications of an empowerment approach to small enterprise development has rarely been thought through. This paper attempts to provide a basis for initiating a debate. Part 1 provides an overview of debates about small enterprise development and empowerment. Part 2 then proposes a strategic framework for an empowerment approach small enterprise development and the implications for different areas of SED intervention. The paper focuses particularly on the ‘wealth creation needs’ of
very poor entrepreneurs, particularly very poor women,
who are being excluded from or increasingly marginalised
by current small enterprise development policy.
MAYOUX, L. and R. CHAMBERS (2005).
“Reversing the Paradigm: Quantification, Participatory Methods and Pro-Poor Growth.” Journal of International Development March.
PALS/ quantification/ participatory methods/ impact
assessment/
Recent debates about integrated impact assessment,
have tended to treat participatory approaches and
methods as a fashionable frill added on to more ‘expert’ quantitative
and qualitative investigation. This paper argues that,
far from being an optional add-on, participatory approaches,
methods and behaviours are essential for the new agendas
of pro-poor development and 'improving practice'.
Recent evidence shows that participatory methods/
can generate accurate quantitative data as well as
capturing local priorities, different experiences
of poor people and potential for innovation in relation
to causality and attribution. They can also be cost-effective
for focusing quantitative and qualitative investigation.
The main challenge is ensuring that mainstreaming
them does not compromise their role in giving poor
women and men more voice in development priorities,
policies and practice.
MAYOUX, L. (2005)
Learning and Decent Work for All: New Directions in Training and Education for Pro-Poor Development
ILO Geneva
training/ pro-poor development/ literacy/ paradigms/
Since the end of the 1990s international agreements
and policy debates have increasingly focused on the
concept and imperatives for 'pro-poor growth'. In
these debates Human Resources Development is seen
as playing a key role. Education and training are
explicitly part of the Pro-poor growth/ framework
in many multilateral development agencies, including
ILO, UNDP, World Bank and bilateral agencies like
DFID, SDC and CIDA. Skills development and training
for the informal and formal sectors are an essential
component of ILO's Decent Work policy framework.
This includes explicit attention to the needs of
particularly excluded and disadvantaged people including
women, the extremely poor, the disabled and ethnic
minorities.
However throughout the 1990s, despite official commitments
in many development agencies to Human Resource Development
and poverty reduction, funding for training and skills
development decreased. Public expenditure on basic
education, skills development and training was seriously
squeezed in the context of structural adjustment
policies and liberalisation. Poverty-targeted assistance
was focused on provision of minimalist microfinance.
Funding for integrated or complementary non-financial
services, including training, substantially decreased.
Human Development budgets in major donor agencies
focused largely on primary education programmes rather
than skills for work. Although a few programmes have
been introduced for 'lifelong learning' and ICT these
do not reach the very poor. The current market focus
on demand-led services, partnership with the private
sector and cost-recovery have been important advances
on many earlier subsidised programmes in terms of
meeting the needs of certain groups of entrepreneurs
and employees in a more sustainable and cost-effective
manner. However they fail to address the training
challenge faced by very low income women and men.
Parallel to these 'mainstream' debates about the
best mix of subsidised and market approaches, there
have been many small-scale project-level innovations
in poverty-targeted training methods and content,
particularly in female-targeted projects. These have
included:
· Integration of
life skills, gender awareness and empowerment into
livelihood and entrepreneurship training.
· Participatory
methods which focus on participant bottom-up learning
rather than top-down 'expert' training and which
are accessible to illiterate people.
· Integrated programmes
of livelihood development training for very poor
and illiterate people with literacy training and
programme impact assessment,.
· Training as part
of a set of poverty-targeted programme strategies
including micro-finance, marketing support, organizational
strategies and macrolevel advocacy.
· Training targeting
different levels of particular economic sectors:
employees, outworkers and upstream enterprises as
part of an integrated pro-poor sectoral approach
in these sectors.
In many cases two or more of these elements have
been combined. However these innovations have so
far been marginal in donor-level debates and also
funding.
This paper argues that the recent small-scale innovations
deserve much greater consideration and funding in
any serious and coherent strategy for pro-poor growth.
The paper builds on current debates and evidence
from a number of donor agencies including ILO, World
Bank, DFID and GTZ and also secondary source material
from NGOs and the author's own research:
Part 1 provides an overview of current debates and
evidence in relation to training and skills development
for pro-poor growth and proposes a framework for
examining training needs.
Part 2 discusses in detail the poverty impacts and
broader implications of the experience of a number
of innovative training and skills development programmes.
Part 3 summarises the main conclusions in relation
to potential ways forward to improve the content,
targeting and institutional framework for training
and skills development for poor and very poor women
and men.
MAYOUX, L., S. MOSEDALE and EDS (2005).
“Impact Assessment for Pro-Poor Accountability: Innovations and Challenges.” Journal of International Development(March).
impact assessment/ participatory methods/
Since the mid-1990s impact assessment has become
an established requirement for many development interventions.
At the same time, its purpose, methodologies and
usefulness remain highly contested. Firstly there
are intense debates about 'appropriate indicators'
by which complex development processes like poverty
reduction or empowerment can be assessed. Secondly
there has been increasing impatience with impact
assessments which take time and resources away from
development activity itself without yielding any
useful practical recommendations based on the evidence
gathered. Addressing these challenges for impact
assessment is essential for progress towards pro-poor
growth and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Since the late 1990s, donors, NGOs and researchers
have become increasingly interested in the potential
of participatory impact assessment, monitoring and
evaluation to capture the complexities of development
and link assessment with ‘improving practice’.
The emphasis on participatory methods is seen as potentially
empowering in and of itself. Such participatory approaches
have undoubtedly increased our understanding of the
nature of poverty and the needs and aspirations of
very poor people. In some cases they have also contributed
to improvements in programmes and policies.
Nevertheless, despite claims of empowerment, in practice ‘participation’ may consist of little more than requiring people to spend time attending one-off PRA exercises and focus group discussions to meet the information needs of donors and NGOs. Participatory tools are applied very loosely, with most of the analysis and dissemination in the hands of external facilitators. People are often inadequately prepared with information to contribute to such exercises and have very little control over how the information is used and fed into decision-making. At its worst participatory impact assessment amounts to little more than using people as unpaid data collectors to reduce costs and give the appearance of ‘empowerment’.
This Policy Forum brings together papers based on presentations
at the DFID-sponsored EDIAIS conference ‘New Directions in impact assessment for Development’ held
at the University of Manchester in November 2003. They
present recent experience of innovations which attempt
to confront some of the real challenges posed in ensuring
that impact assessment makes its full potential contribution
to pro-poor development.
MAYOUX, L. (2005)
Marrying Jeckell with Hyde? Transnational Enterprises, Pro-Poor Development and Sustainable Ethical Learning
TNE/ participatory methods/