The Local Governance Poverty Reduction Support Programme (LGPRSP) supported the implementation and monitoring of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS I) in its target districts through the strengthening of the capacity of district structures to design and implement target-group specific and gender sensitive programmes. The thrust of the Programme was to work with the political and administrative structures of the district as well as private sector actors and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to prepare district level poverty profiles and maps that would give indications of how poverty manifests itself among different socio-economic groups. The poverty maps would also indicate how poverty presents itself in spatial terms in the district.

The first step in undertaking the assignment involved a review of the current approaches and methodologies being used by donors, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and other development partners to tackle poverty. This was followed by interactive dialogue sessions with district and community level stakeholders in Kintampo and Atebubu Districts to corroborate data from the consultations with national level development partner agencies. The interactions were also used to elicit their perceptions on poverty and learn from their experience with poverty reduction interventions. The outcome included the perceptions and indicators of poverty from the perspectives of district level stakeholders and community level stakeholders, as well as current and future (suggested) coping strategies of the poor.

The outcomes of the dialogue sessions formed the basis for the second interface with stakeholders in the two districts, which aimed at:

• Sharing and validating the outcome of the first dialogue sessions on the poverty profiling, and
• Mapping out poverty pockets in the districts

The outputs and insights gained from theses activities were used as inputs to the preparation of this Guide.