By BRAC UPGI • January 26, 2024 • 1 minute read
The Working Scientist podcast series from Nature features an episode with Catherine Thomas, a researcher, who is involved in a project in the West African country of Niger, where she is helping its poorest citizens in an extremely innovative way.
Thomas explains that poverty is more than just meeting basic material needs. Its corrosive effects are also social and psychological, causing people to feel marginalized and helpless.
Thomas’s research into anti-poverty programmes has focused on the effects of one aimed at women in the West African country of Niger, which aims to support subsistence farmers whose livelihoods are impacted by climate change.
One of the most compelling and striking findings was that the program that included psychosocial programming was one of the most cost-effective multifaceted anti-poverty programs documented in this literature to date.
Thomas said “So now hopefully governments will be encouraged to scale these programs. Because not only do they have rigorous empirical backing for achieving the goal of ending poverty, but they also are highly cost-effective.”