This report summarizes the main issues raised during the e-consultation, “Economic-Strengthening
Pathways for the Bottom Billion: Connecting the Dots,” sponsored by Poverty Outreach Working
Group of The SEEP Network, May 17–19, 2011. A complete transcript of the discussion is available at
http://tinyurl.com/2011econsult

The e-consultation brought practitioners from different economic development disciplines together in
order to learn about one another’s recent innovations in reaching the very poor and helping them move
along an economic-strengthening pathway toward increased economic self-reliance and growth. By
better understanding various dimensions of extreme poverty and identifying different segments within
very poor populations, e-consultation participants started to lay a foundation for a common conceptual
framework for economic strengthening. This framework reveals relevant entry points for different
interventions and services along a pathway from extreme poverty to economic self-reliance.