What We Do
Poverty Analysis
What is poverty? How do we measure it?
SPRI Global specializes in analyzing monetary and multidimensional poverty for children, women, youths, and households. One of the approaches we use is Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis (MODA), a tool developed by UNICEF, that measures multidimensional child poverty based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These analyses allow us to gain a clearer picture of the many ways in which children experience poverty, to guide appropriate programming and policy responses. MODA is a practical and flexible tool that allows rigorous measurement of multidimensional child poverty in different contexts, as well as in-depth monitoring of SDG target 1.2: “by 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions”.
We have conducted over 30 contextualized national studies of multidimensional child poverty using MODA, in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and eastern Europe.
Besides providing reliable estimates of multidimensional poverty, MODA is a useful tool for contextualized policy analysis and design. MODA brings into focus the deprivations that individuals experience, and highlights the specific combinations, or overlaps of deprivations that hamper their well-being. For children, this analysis helps us understand how to optimize policy interventions to best promote the development of children and adolescents towards realizing their full potential. In these contexts, MODA emphasizes that addressing a single deprivation is often not enough – combined interventions, simultaneously implemented across several sectors, need to thrive in order to be able to contribute to future economic growth and socially balanced societies.
Together with our development partners, we use MODA and other analyses and methodologies as the backbone for producing comprehensive Situation Analyses, to quantify arguments for child-sensitive investment cases, for designing the most effective policies to bridge coverage and financing gaps, and for estimating and mobilizing budgets needed to implement policy initiatives.
We present results from MODA analyses, and policy paper recommendations in our interactive web portal: nmoda.spriglobal.org
Social Protection
What is Social Protection? Why is it important?
SPRI Global specializes in social protection policy analysis, design, and financing. Social protection comprises a set of public policy instruments aiming to reduce individual’s exposure to risks, assisting them by enhancing their attitudes, knowledge, skills and material resources so that they can actively contribute to the reduction of risk exposure and better deal with the consequences of bad luck and adverse shocks. Social protection policies play a key role in reducing and preventing poverty and leveling out inequalities to help all women, men and children reach or maintain an adequate standard of living and good health throughout their lives.
Countries invest in social protection for a variety of reasons, including supporting human development, enhancing social cohesion, strengthening their labor force and stimulating economic growth. Social protection is a human right and features prominently in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development Goal 1.3 calls on all countries to provide social security to all as a means to end poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030. Social protection is fundamental in achieving several other Sustainable Development Goals.
At SPRI Global, we understand social protection to be a useful entry-point to addressing the more difficult policy agendas of making growth work for the chronically poor and advancing a process of progressive social change. A focus on social protection is crucial to eliminating poverty as part of the global approach to development. It is a practical solution to improve the economic and social security of the poorest and support their efforts to create human capital and assets. We support governments in facilitating national systems of social protection in low-income countries, and we advocate a different approach to economic policy making, one that will provide for a more just and equitable society and be more compatible with the aspirations and expectations of citizens.
Decent employment and better living conditions cannot be seen only as potential by-products of income growth – or even as ends in themselves – but as a means to sustainable growth. Our work aims to provide a blueprint for forward-looking economic policy, by emphasizing the role of social protection in enabling people to better overcome poverty and social exclusion in both developing and developed countries.
Capacity Building
Specialized Courses in Social Protection and Social Policy
SPRI Global organizes and facilitates training and capacity building courses and workshops on a global scale. We specialize in trainings involving monetary and non-monetary poverty analysis for children, women, men and households, and courses in social protection (financing, costing, actuarial simulations and other quantitative models, administration, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and social risk management).
We design and facilitate training courses and capacity building workshops that are adapted to local context and need. SPRI associates have trained local government stakeholders, UN staff, national statistical offices, ministries, universities and other local researches on monetary and multidimensional poverty analysis and social protection financing in numerous countries including:
- Sub-Saharan Africa (Zimbabwe, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Eswatini, Zambia)
- Middle East & North Africa(Morocco, Algeria, State of Palestine, Libya)
- Asia (Cambodia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Indonesia).
Our training activities range from short workshops, to developing full week courses and contributions to MSc. and PhD program modules. Trainings, courses and programs are provided in both English and French. Among these specialized courses in social protection are the following modules:
- Addressing Risks and Vulnerabilities Through Social Protection
- Financing Social Protection Systems
- Social Protection and Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and Inequity
- Contribution-based Social Protection – Health and Pensions
- Monitoring and Evaluation of Social Protection
- Social Protection Ensuring Survival
- Cash Transfers and Links to Other Sectors
- Shock-Responsive Social Protection
- Child-Sensitive Social Protection and HIV
Research
Our Applied and Academic Research Agenda
SPRI Global employs specialized teams who are experts in their specific area of focus. Our team’s skills span research and analysis, consultation and capacity building, course development and facilitation, project management and communication. Our technical team focuses on business development and communications, while our research team specializes in social protection and poverty research.
SPRI Global strongly believes in high quality, context-driven research and policy design that is impactful, sensitive to the local context, and complementary to the sustainable strengthening of national policy making capacities through training activities and academic courses. It is our mission to ensure that our research solutions and policy proposals provide economical and feasible solutions that support society’s most vulnerable groups, including children, women and girls, the elderly, and marginalized groups. The results of SPRI Globals’s projects have been used in national dialogue and policy processes, in poverty reduction strategies and for policy advocacy purposes. The core portfolios in SPRI Global’s research agenda encompass:
- Social protection
- Multidimensional poverty, monetary poverty, subjective poverty
- Public Finance Management
- Situation Analysis
- Child poverty and well-being
- Gender and sexuality
- Capacity building and academic training
SPRI Global supports its clients and partners in providing innovative, cost-effective, and beneficial advisory services and solutions in the following specialized areas:
- Social policy with a concentration in social protection policy design
- Poverty and deprivation reduction research, analysis, and policy design
- Policy intervention evaluations for systemic coherence and impact
- Sustainable Development Goal monitoring and evaluation
- Public Finance Management diagnostics, reform, and research
- Public Finance Management for children
- Social policy budgeting