From Pakistan Observer -

Islamabad—Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) is initiating two days training of trainers for National Poverty Targeting Survey using Poverty Scorecard tool developed by the World Bank for Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in Dera Ghazi Khan district from tomorrow, December 21, 2010.

PPAF has arranged a three days Training of Trainers (ToT) for 30 supervisory staff including supervisors, forward campaigners and editors in the first batch and after completion of field teams’ trainings the data collection exercise would get under way in the district.

As many as 30 field teams comprising 390 survey staff would be deployed for conducting survey in the district. PPAF has already started pre-launch activities and completed the survey planning including important components of recruitment and training of survey filed teams, logistic arrangements, local level public information campaign, enumeration of poverty scorecard, monitoring and evaluation. The door-to-door survey will start on the heels of the training of trainers in Dera Ghazi Khan District.

PPAF and BISP divisional team will facilitate training event on targeting requirements, data collection methodology, implementation mechanism, quality control aspects, monitoring and evaluation besides sharing lessons learnt from the Test Phase 2009. PPAF focuses strategic emphasis on geographical and program integration, achievement of depth and intensity of coverage, stemming from which is an explicit focus on poverty targeting and inclusion.

PPAF is committed to protect the vulnerable and marginalized people of Pakistan. Similar to PPAF, BISP aims to provide “direct and speedy relief to the underprivileged sections of the society.” As the two organizations have overlapping objectives, PPAF and BISP have developed a strategic partnership to rollout the National Poverty Targeting Survey using Poverty Scorecard tool developed by the World Bank for Pakistan. In pursuance of agreed terms and conditions with BISP, PPAF is committed to collect data on Poverty Scorecard in 12 districts of Southern Punjab, Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and Sindh.

PPAF is the lead apex institution for community-driven development in the country and the largest source of pro-poor spending outside Public Sector Development Programme and the Federal budget. Set up as a fully autonomous private sector institution, PPAF enjoys facilitation and support from the Government of Pakistan, the World Bank, IFAD, USAid, USDA, KfW and US Corporate Sector. Outreach of PPAF now extends throughout Pakistan and its microcredit, water and infrastructure, drought mitigation, education, health and emergency response interventions have been widely recognized. As the largest institution of its kind in the world, PPAF has received high performance ratings from donors. Since April 2000, cumulative disbursements of PPAF (both lending and grant based) stand at over US $ 1,000 million of which financing for microfinance had the largest share (US $ 600 million).