Grameen Foundation Announces Launch of New Certification Program for Poverty Measurement Using Progress out of Poverty Index® (PPI)®

WASHINGTON, June 4, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Grameen Foundation is pleased to announce the launch of a new certification program for organizations and businesses that serve or work with poor communities. The PPI Certification Program recognizes excellence in poverty measurement using the Progress out of Poverty Index^® (PPI^®), a simple tool for estimating poverty among clients.

Grameen Foundation advocates that organizations use real, objective data to drive decision-making in programs. Insights about client poverty help organizations that serve the poor improve the quality of their poverty-reduction strategy. Businesses that include poor communities in their value chain can use these insights to improve their business practices.

PPI Certification holds PPI users to meaningful standards established by Grameen Foundation and its partners. The certification is administered by participating rating agencies. Organizations already pursuing a social rating or other assessment may add PPI Certification to their service package at a significantly reduced cost. Any organization that uses the PPI can pursue certification.

Julie Peachey, Director of the Social Performance Management Center at Grameen Foundation, explains, "This new iteration of PPI Certification is an important milestone for the PPI and the wider social performance community. Partnering with rating agencies will allow more organizations to get certified – which means more leaders can rest assured that their poverty data is reliable and accurate."

MicroFinanza Rating and Planet Rating are fully-licensed PPI certifiers. M-CRIL, MicroRate, and Moody's Analytics are in the beta stage of the certification program.

PPI Certification will be awarded by rating agencies at one of two levels: Basic or Advanced. The rating agency will award the level it deems most appropriate given the organization's ability to meet the required standards. A Basic Certification indicates that an organization employs best practices for accurate poverty measurement. An Advanced Certification distinguishes high performers. 

The standards that PPI users must meet in order to be certified are available for download at www.progressoutofpoverty.org/standards. The Basic Standards of Use are designed to ensure the integrity of PPI data. The Advanced Standards of Use ensure that the organization has systems in place that effectively capture and analyze poverty data along with other client characteristics, leading to important discoveries about the needs of clients.

PPI-certified organizations enjoy the following benefits:

• Higher confidence in the accuracy of the organization's PPI data
• Identification of areas for improvement
• Increased trust among stakeholders
• Enhanced reputation and mission-alignment
• Differentiation from peers

Visit our website at www.progressoutofpoverty.org/certification to learn about the steps in the PPI Certification process.

About the Progress out of Poverty Index^®
The Progress out of Poverty Index^® (PPI^®) is a poverty measurement tool for organizations and businesses with a mission to serve the poor.  The PPI is statistically-sound, yet simple to use: the answers to 10 questions about a household's characteristics and asset ownership are scored to compute the likelihood that the household is living below the poverty line – or above by only a narrow margin.  With the PPI, organizations can identify the clients, customers, or employees who are most likely to be poor or vulnerable to poverty, integrating objective poverty data into their assessments and strategic decision-making. To learn more, visit www.progressoutofpoverty.org.

About Grameen Foundation
Grameen Foundation is a global nonprofit organization that helps the world's poorest people achieve their full potential by providing access to essential financial services and information on health and agriculture that can transform their lives. Founded in 1997, it delivers solutions that respond to the needs of the poor, as well as tools that help poverty-focused organizations become more effective. It focuses on initiatives that can achieve widespread impact and uses an open-source approach that makes it easy for other organizations to adopt them broadly. Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and the Grameen family of companies, is an inaugural member of its Board of Directors, and now serves as director emeritus. Grameen Foundation is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in the U.S., Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. For more information, please visit www.grameenfoundation.org or follow us on Twitter @GrameenFdn.

Contact: Liselle Yorke
202-628-3560, ext 128
[email protected]

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SOURCE Grameen Foundation