The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) program in Ghana managed by the Ministry of Gender Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP) is a cash transfer initiative designed to alleviate poverty and improve living standards among the most vulnerable populations. The program’s primary objectives are to reduce poverty by increasing and smoothing consumption among extremely poor households, promote access to services and opportunities, such as healthcare and education, and to Improve household consumption and nutrition, particularly among children, the elderly, and people with severe disabilities.
The LEAP program which has survived through the test and trials of the conduct of political activities on political arena and successive government since the implementation of the program in the year 2008, demands the need to assess the Impact Evaluate and Monitoring to determine its effectiveness and identify areas for improvement according to the rules and regulations that governs the implementation of the program.
On the basis of the official communique from the LEAP Management Secretariat (LMS) to the constitute LEAP Reassessment Team in Metropolitan, Municipal, and District instructing them to engage the LEAP Reassessment Committee and Community Focal Persons (CFPs) on the Reassessment exercise which have tentatively slated to commence on the stipulated date.
In response to the official communique in good faith, the LEAP Reassessment Team of Atiwa East District Assembly engaged the Reassessment Committee on the date of January 9, 2025, at the Assembly Hall with the purpose of sharing with them the rationale, the objective of LEAP Reassessment, and their roles during the exercise.
Before the engagement with the Reassessment Committee, the Reassessment Team met to abreast themselves first on the LEAP Reassessment Strategic Implementation.
Some of the highlights shared by the Reassessment Team during the event with the audience were a summary of the origin of the LEAP Program since the year 2008, and how the program kickstarted at Atiwa East District for the first time in the year 2016 after the came about of the District.
According to the popular quote from Nelson Mandela which states that “Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the action of human being”, the Team vividly expatiated the reasons and the importance of the program to the beneficiaries as a reminder, and why the committee should whole-heartly commit themselves to the Reassessment exercise.
The LEAP committee was abreast with the amount of cash grants release to the beneficiaries from the year 2008 to 2024 according to the Number of Eligible member(s) in the household, the 200% increment of the cash grants since June 2023 to the current date on the basis of the influence of the global market and the depreciation value of the country’s local currency.
The LEAP households were supposed to be reassessed every four (4) years; however, no reassessment has been conducted since the commencement of the program in the year 2008 due to certain constraints, especially appropriate allocation of funding for the reassessment.
The Reassessment Team to the committee in clarity stated the objectives of the Reassessment exercise which is to seek identify households that will no longer be eligible for program and link them to the other complementary services and support, and to update the LEAP beneficiaries register in other to give more room for qualified eligible beneficiaries to be also enrolled into the program for which is an indication of the enhancement of transparency, consistency and fairness.
The committee was also abreast of the possible outcomes of the reassessment exercise which is to either remain, graduate, or exit as beneficiaries from the program. These possible outcomes solely lie on the responses of the beneficiaries to the various questions that will be put before them by the outsourced third-party data collection firms (in this case, it may be JMK or ESOKO). Regarding this, the committee must effectively collaborate with the third-party data collection firms, the Reassessment Team, and the Community Focal Persons for the effective conduct of the exercise.