Graduation Programming

30 November 2020

Concern has adopted a Graduation approach in a number of countries since 2008 (Bangladesh, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Malawi, Rwanda, Somalia, Zambia), as a means of sustainably addressing extreme poverty at the household level.

Beatrice Mukandagano, a beneficiary of the Graduation model programme in Kirundo province (Burundi) sitting with her 4 children beside the house she built herself in Bugabira commune. She also bought land to cultivate as a result of the programme.

Graduation programmes provide an integrated and sequencing package of support - combining social protection, livelihood promotion, social empowerment and financial inclusion to create pathways out of extreme and chronic poverty. For more information on Concern’s Graduation programme please see: https://www.concern.org.uk/what-we-do/livelihoods.

The following resources have been developed to support the design of programmes:

Guidance materials

Adapting the Graduation Approach to Urban Contexts: Theory and Practice|PDF(1 MB)

Gender Transformative Graduation Brief 2020 (English)|PDF(952 KB)

Gender Transformative Graduation Brief 2020 (French)|PDF(893 KB)

Measuring Graduation - A Guidance Note 2018|PDF(1 MB)

Learning documents

Evaluation of the Graduation Model Pilot Programme Zambia 2016|PDF(3 MB)

Graduating from Extreme Poverty in Zambia's Western Province 2016|PDF(929 KB)

Lessons from the Graduation Programme in Bangladesh|PDF(749 KB)

We also produced a special issue of the Knowledge Matters publication in 2014 focused on the early successes and challenges of the graduation programmes, which can be accessed here: Knowledge Matters - Graduation.

We are committed to producing high quality learning and has invested in operational research to better understand the effectiveness of programme approaches and the barriers faced by particular groups in escaping extreme and chronic poverty.

For more information on our research in Rwanda and Burundi (in partnership with the UK’s Institute of Development Studies) please see: Research from the Graduation Model

For more information on our research in Malawi (in partnership with TIME (Trinity Impact Evaluation Unit) at Trinity College Dublin please see: The Graduation Model and Gender Empowerment research project in Malawi