Charity Irungu, Manfred Zeller:
On Targeting and Outreach of NGDO Safety Net Programmes: Evidence from Rural Kenya

CHARITY IRUNGU, MANFRED ZELLER
Georg-August University Göttingen, Institute of Rural Development, Germany

Targeting limited resources in the context of poverty alleviation to a subgroup of the population, who need them most remain a challenge to most development agencies and policy-makers. Though widely recognised as an attempt to reach the poorest of the poor, targeting is however not always straight forward to implement and a poorly targeted intervention could end up being more costly and less effective than one that is randomly allocated or made available to all households. Due to limited resources and the small scale of operations, most Non Governmental Development Organisations' (NGDOs) practice targeting to limit access to the interventions to only a select group of individuals considered to be most in need.

This paper examines the targeting performance and depth of outreach of two child-safety net programmes in rural Kenya funded by Christian Children's Fund/Kenya and Compassion International/Kenya. Targeting in both NGDOs is done at two
levels. Geographical targeting is used to locate a programme area and household-level targeting is done on the basis of local community knowledge. Data for this paper were collected through a household survey of 120 randomly selected households, stratified equally into participants and non-participants, in which a detailed questionnaire was used. In addition data from in-depth studies of the two programs are also used to complement the household survey.

The paper analyses the extent to which children from `the poorest' households are included in the programmes. Relative household poverty is assessed through use of a poverty index, developed from a set of selected poverty indicators using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). An econometric model is specified to identify the determinants of participation. Results show the importance of the human, physical and social types of capital in enhancing selection. The role of the local socio-political power structure is also evident in the selection process.

Keywords: Depth of outreach, NGOs, relative poverty assessment, targeting

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Contact Address: Charity Irungu, Georg-August University Göttingen, Institute of Rural Development, Waldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany, e-mail: cirungugwdg.de