Program Design
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that community involvement increases targeting accuracy, given the community’s advantages regarding access to information (Conning and Kevane 2002; Platteau and Abraham 2002; Subbarao 1997). Communities tend to know their members, their living conditions, and the particularities of their environment, and are thus more efficient at identifying households that are in need. Community participation has the potential of reducing administrative costs compared to alternative targeting mechanisms. On the other hand, community targeting may have disadvantages that can negatively affect a program, such as rent-seeking and capture by local elites, risk of community conflict, and lack of accountability. Box 4.4 presents an overview of beneficiary selection using community mechanisms in Rwanda. Proxy means testing. Proxy means tests use fairly easy-to-observe household characteristics (location and quality of dwelling, ownership of durable goods, demographic structure, level of education, etc.) as proxies
Box 4.4
Community Approach to Targeting in Rwanda Selection of beneficiaries for the Vision 2020 Umurenge Program is based on participatory approaches. This approach involves three steps: • Communities identify poor households based on the traditional ubudehe (local collective action) approach, which classifies six states of well-being, ranging from extreme poor to food rich. • Communities identify households in the bottom two classifications: umutindi nyakujya (extreme poverty) and umutindi (very poor). Within these two categories, households that are landless (have less than 0.25 hectares of land) and have at least one adult (aged 18 or older) who is capable of manual labor are identified and assigned to the public works program eligibility list. • Eligible households are then ranked according to their poverty and vulnerability levels. The social map of each community is periodically updated and used at meetings of village members. Source: Government of Rwanda 2009.