On Reaching the Hardcore Poor: Some Evidence on Social Exclusion in NGO Programmes

Recently there has been a growing concern that the poorest of the poor are not reached by the NGO interventions. This recognition has led to a number of studies that have discussed the issue of participation in NGO programmes. However, although some NGOs have several social programmes side-by-side their micro-credit interventions, all the studies, so far, have only considered the issue of non-participation of the poorest households in credit programmes. As a result, from the existing literature it is not possible to know the nature of participation in the social programmes, let alone the question of less representation by a particular group within the target population. The present paper, probably for the first time, studies the extent of participation of the extreme poor in the social programmes of the NGOs based on some primary data gathered from field survey. It is found that the social programmes of the NGOs are also less participated by the extreme poor households like its counterpart credit components. An attempt has been made here to present some empirical evidence of the extent of this exclusion and to understand the internal dynamics of participation in such programmes.