The $10 million project identified the poorest households that will be the beneficiary of the funding.
A $10 million project from Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and China Co-Financing Fund for Latin America aims to improve 250 households that belong to the lowest socioeconomic communities in Barbados.
It is the first time that IDB partners with Barbados in the social care and labour market sector. Included in the project are programs such as career counselling, educational services, technical skills training, and health promotion.
According to Loop News, the Ministry of Social Care, Constituency Empowerment and Community Development in Barbados has pinpointed the households that will benefit from the project through the use of an objective tool called the Proxy Means Test (PMT).
Project Coordinator, Maureen Pollard, said: “The Proxy Means Test is an important tool in the success of this project so it is vital we pre-train our staff in all aspects of this beneficiary selection and targeting tool. We want to ensure that those in the community who require our assistance are accurately identified.”
Variables like family size, income, educational attainment, and access to water were taken into consideration to predict the poverty level that these households were in. This test has been carried out in Latin American and Caribbean countries, and has proven to be accurate.
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