OECS Supports Regional Training on Multidimensional Poverty Measurement

Four OECS Member States and three staff members of the OECS Commission benefitted from a regional training course on Multidimensional Poverty Measurement.

The training was hosted and funded by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) from 26 February to 2 March, 2018 at the Bank’s headquarters in St. Michael, Barbados and was designed to build the capacity of statisticians, economists and social planners in the CDB’s Borrowing Member Countries that are beneficiaries of the Enhanced Country Poverty Assessment Programme.

At the end of the week-long course, participants were expected to:

1. Understand the framework in which the multidimensional poverty measurement emerged and its relevance to the current state of poverty analysis;
2. Be able to adapt the Alkire and Foster multidimensional poverty method according to their own requirements and contexts (including the calculation of the basic OECS Multidimensional Poverty Indicators (MPI));
3. Understand why and how multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis adds value to unidimensional measures and dashboards, and how they can be used to inform policy-making; and
4. Receive information about further opportunities to engage within the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network for policy makers.

The training course was convened in collaboration with the OECS Commission, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Organisation of American States (OAS).

The Enhanced Country Poverty Assessment Programme was launched in July 2016 and will be executed by the OECS Commission.