International Care Ministries

The Philippines is home to 7 million people living in ultra- poverty, defined as living on less than 50 US cents a day, who face a range of challenges which require multifaceted interventions which reflect the complex nature of ultra-poverty. Graduation programmes are one solution which combines financial literacy and inclusion, business development training, asset transfers, health and education components.These programmes have a strong and growing evidence base, but have proved challenging to scale given the need to finance asset transfer component and the intensity of the intervention, which is typically delivered over several months in a community setting.

In May 2020, GIF provided ICM with a $5.5M scale grant to rigorously test variations of the Transform programme to identify the optimal mix of components which can deliver cost effect impacts. Working with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), ICM will test the impact of programmatic changes relating to, the size, timing and mode of delivery of small asset transfers, the programme duration, and the inclusion of new components focussed on health, education and values. ICMs large reach allows ICM and IPA to randomise these changes across different transform batches, and generate evidence of their impact on outcomes relating to income, consumption, health, and belief, among other. This research will inform the design of a revised ‘Transform 2.0’ which contains the optimal components to deliver cost-effectiveness outcomes, which in turn will be evaluated through a large scale randomised control trial.