THE GOVERNMENT of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), with funding from the World Bank, is implementing the Human Development Service Delivery Project. One of the important components of this project is the development of a comprehensive Social Protection Policy and accompanying fiveyear strategic plan.

There have been notable successes in SVG’s development, particularly over the past 15 years, however poverty and unemployment remain major development challenges that need to be addressed, a release from the Ministry of National Mobilisation states.

The government has prioritised the development of the Social Protection Policy and Strategic Plan as critical strategies to reduce poverty and deprivation.

The overall goal of the policy and plan is to map the way forward for the government to strengthen its response to the needs of the poor and vulnerable and to empower people to be healthy, become educated and trained and be able to seek opportunities to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

An e-survey is also being employed to further complement the findings from these consultative sessions, and to obtain the views on poverty and social protection from a wider cross-section of the Vincentian people to inform the policy and plan. The e-Survey is commissioned by the Ministry of National Mobilisation with the approval of the Statistical Office and designed with the specific intent of capturing individual perceptions of poverty and social Protection in SVG.

To this end, levels of knowledge and attitudes of the Vincentian people towards social protection are gauged and the findings used to complement and broaden our understanding beyond that of the FGDs.

The e-Survey is a short, self-administered questionnaire shared via web links/SMS to all persons living in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The short questionnaire is comprised of three main sections: Social Protection; Poverty; and Basic Respondent Demographics; no personal identifying information is captured and only aggregate statistics will be shared in the analytical report generated.

Social Protection e-Survey Link: https:// forms.gle/BPqmV3DYG4o6ntwZ7