poverty reduction strategies

A range of actions available to public health and other agencies to alleviate poverty. These include provision of educational services and facilities, empowering poor people in ways that enable them to gain greater control over their own destiny, enhance their self-esteem, and achieve greater success in finding work. In low-income countries, the provision of small interest-free or low-interest loans, i.e., microcredit schemes, to impoverished people to enable them to make modest capital investments, to purchase a bicycle to get to work or a sewing machine for a woman to make clothes, is an effective strategy, as shown by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and similar programs. See http://www.grameen-info.org/.