How to reach the poorest?

Engagement on behalf of poor people, and the reduction of poverty, are legal obligations under Swiss foreign policy. SDC is committed to understanding poverty dynamics and to promoting approaches that are effective in improving the well-being of poor people. Poverty is a multifaceted phenomenon that touches all areas of life, undermining human dignity. According to SDC's understanding of poverty, poverty results in discrimination, obstacles and exclusion

• in satisfying the basic necessities of life;
• in the use and development of an individual’s physical and human potential, capacities and creativity;
• in seizing the opportunities and choices for fashioning a fulfilling and dignified life;
• in the realisation of one’s aspirations;
• from participating in the formulation and decision-making stages of the social, political and economic transformation process.

SDC thus supports efforts to change the structural causes and framework conditions that produce impoverishment, chronic poverty, dependence, injustice, and exclusion, or which allow them to persist.

Short papers on "how to reach the poorest?" and on "how to make the poverty focus in Swiss Cooperation Strategy explicit" are available for download under More on Focus on Poverty. 

A series of SDC studies about how people living in poverty percieve their situation are available under Views of the Poor.

In the Poverty File, we share a number of briefing notes on poverty related issues, including policy issues.

Under Further Reading and Links, we provide a selected list of additional resources.

Your comments and questions are most welcome, please feel free to contact us.