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Paper short abstract

Reflections and learning from implementing anti-poverty Graduation approach across rural, urban, fragile, and climate-vulnerable contexts, focusing on gender, environmental resilience, and scalable coaching models

Paper long abstract

For 17 years, Concern Worldwide has implemented Graduation programmes across diverse contexts and an ever-changing backdrop of global priorities. Spanning rural farming communities, urban informal settlements, stable environments, and fragile and conflict-affected contexts, the scaling and adaption of approaches to meet different needs and priorities has been vital to achieving socially inclusive, environmentally sustainable, and climate-resilient pathways out of extreme poverty.

In this panel, Concern will share concrete lessons from adapting anti-poverty programming to new and challenging contexts. Some innovations have been prompted by research; others emerged from operational experience and later became research questions. As implementation realities shift, many of the foundational questions remain — often more complex than initially anticipated.

We will explore key areas where adaptations and innovations are underway, or emergent:

• Gender-transformative programming: integrating gender transformative dialogue into the Graduation package, building on recent evidence from Malawi showing positive effects on women’s decision-making, asset ownership, and household dynamics.

• Environmental sustainability and climate resilience: embedding a “green lens” into Graduation, including sustainable resource management, risk mitigation, and ecosystem-aware livelihood strategies, as promoted in our “Greening Graduation” work.

• Coaching and scalability (the “X factor”): reflecting on the role of coaching and mentoring — long recognized as critical but resource-intensive and difficult to measure — and discussing the potential and risks of digital adaptations or AI to maintain effectiveness while scaling.

Through this implementer’s perspective, we will ground academic insights in operational realities, highlighting tensions and trade-offs, knowledge gaps, and promising directions for future anti-poverty programming.