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Basseterre, St. Kitts, January 25, 2018 (SKNIS): The National Assessment Teams (NAT) in St. Kitts and in Nevis are now better prepared to execute the first phase of the Country Poverty Assessment (CPA) following two one-day training workshops on each island. The training workshop in St. Kitts took place on Tuesday (January 23) and on Wednesday (January 24) in Nevis. The facilitators came from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission in St. Lucia. They were Sinovia Moonie, Research and Survey Statistician, and Amonia Paul Rolle, Social Agenda Analyst.

 

Ms. Moonie described the training activity as an “orientation workshop” for the members of the Team to ensure that they knew what the first part of the assessment entailed and how they were to proceed.

 

“We are providing them with some guidance in terms of the role that they are expected to play, inform them of the materials and resources that are available to them and to answer any questions they might have at this time as they proceed with the implementation and conduct of the actual assessment,” Ms. Moonie said.

 

Ms. Moonie said that the first part of the assessment to be done was the Living Conditions-Household Budget Survey. She added that it was going to start in the next few weeks using a sample of targeted households.

 

Country Poverty Assessments are comprehensive poverty studies conducted at a national level for the purpose of analysis – determining the characteristics, extent, geographic concentration, severity and causes of poverty and its gendered impacts, as well as policymaking – designing targeted interventions that benefit the poor and vulnerable. It is also used for monitoring and evaluating by assessing the effectiveness of existing programmes and policies aimed at reducing poverty.

 

CPAs are conducted by national governments using the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) model.  The CDB has led the CPA initiative since 1995 and has also provided funding for the Assessment along with the World Bank and the United National Development Programme. The CDB Model prescribes the establishment of a Cabinet-approved National Assessment Team which would be responsible for advising and coordinating the implementation of various aspects of the CPA.  In the execution of its duties, the Team can constitute subcommittees to handle various technical aspects of the assessment process.

 

The Assessment has four main components, in addition to a fifth component that was added to the enhanced model. They are: 1) the Survey of Living Conditions-Household Budget Survey; 2) Participatory Poverty Assessment; 3) Institutional Analysis; 4) Macro Socio-Economic Analysis; and 5) Poverty and Vulnerable Mapping. The Assessments apply a mixed-methods approach involving both quantitative and qualitative research.