Applying Sen's Capability Approach to Poverty Alleviation Programs: Two Case Studies

This research investigated whether Sen's Capability Approach could be applied to two very different programs for human development. The first case study involved a poverty alleviation program based around community gardens in a low-income neighborhood of a moderately sized city in New Zealand. The second was a self-help development project for village women in the Pacific Island nation of Samoa. Sixteen focus groups of participants in the two programs were able to describe significant changes in their capabilities, not only as a result of learning new skills but also as a result of discovering capabilities they already had that could be valuable in creating new opportunities for themselves. This last result is consistent with Sen's emphasis on the importance of participant agency in development.