Author Description

This study investigates what young people and community organisations see as their support needs in Bayelsa State of Nigeria in "tackling poverty. It also examines the process of influencing policy makers, using social marketing techniques. It seeks to expand understanding of the poverty elimination processes: not only within a developing country's rural environmental context, but also endeavours to generalize the findings more broadly. It seeks an inclusive approach to policy determination driven by involving grassroots levels. A mixed-methods research design was adopted engaging a quantitative approach in which 300 young people were surveyed using self-completion questionnaires. In addition, a qualitative study in which policy-makers as well as young people and community organisations were interviewed. A discussion group methodology was adopted. Following the data-analysis, a strategy conference was organized in Nigeria, in which the major findings were presented and debated. This research has improved on the previous Multi-dimensional Poverty Index by enlarging it and combining it with a current Social Marketing Technique model. The new Multi-dimensional Poverty Index - Implementable Joint Programme of Action model is user friendly and retains the multidimensional paradigm. This extension was achieved through the literature research, the development of methodology, adopting mixed-methods approach and the strategy conference. The main findings of the research show that young people and community organisations' support-needs in Bayelsa State of Nigeria are far from being met. A great deal of additional support is required. The most significant causes of poverty amongst young people and community organisations are corruption of government officials, absence of jobs, low wages, oil pollution and IMF/World Bank conditionalities. It was also found that the main experiences of poverty include a high youth unemployment rate, lack of money to go to school, lack of money t