2.9 Conclusions: Working Out of Poverty

For people living in poverty, discrimination and multiple deprivations cumulate to create a cycle of disadvantage. Recurring themes of the experience of poverty are the low returns to work of women and men in socially excluded communities and barriers to finding decent work opportunities.

Policies to reduce and eradicate poverty therefore need to address both the demand and supply sides of the labour market in developing countries, at the same time as shaping strategies for stable and sustainable growth.

Strong community-level action, responsive to local needs and backed up by a supportive framework of laws and public policies, is a basic building block for progress. By breaking life cycles of family deprivation on a large scale, the economy as a whole can move on to a virtuous spiral of sustainable growth and poverty reduction.

The decent work approach to analysing poverty helps to reveal the key targets for community-based action and thus can inform and strengthen national and international partnerships to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Within such partnerships, the ILO is dedicated to finding ways to end social exclusion and enlarge opportunities for more and better jobs.

The ILO’s experience of working with national and local governments and employers’ and workers’ organizations in developing countries over many years has formed and tested a comprehensive portfolio of policy tools founded on enabling communities to work their way out of poverty. The following chapter reviews this experience and the lessons it provides for a coherent approach to poverty reduction that links grass-roots initiatives to national and international strategies by mobilizing people to form and join organizations of various types, including cooperatives and community groups, trade unions and employers’ organizations, and other business associations. To learn more about this author, visit International Labour Organization's Website.

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