Poverty Reduction Forum Trust (PRFT)
The Poverty Reduction Forum Trust (PRFT) is a civil society organisation whose primary mission is to eradicate poverty in Zimbabwe. They do this through informing and influencing policy towards poverty reduction and sustainable human development through research, advocacy and public dialogue.
The PRFT’s main activities include the following:
- Coordinating development of a poverty reduction research agenda.
- Evidence generation through participatory research;
- Convening public policy dialogue platforms utilising evidence from research.
- Raising awareness and influencing implementation processes of national, regional, continental and global development frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals, Agenda 2063 etc.
- Monitoring and supporting local authorities in their implementation of policies
Vision and work in relation to the Global Forum
The PRFT is the convenor of the Zimbabwe CSOs Reference Group on SDGs that it initiated in 2017. The CSOs Reference Group is made up of over fifteen CSOs Apex Organizations across the key sectors of the economy. The Reference Group members work across all the 17 SDGs and have structures that go down to the grassroot level. As such the voice of the usually marginalized groups especially rural communities, women, youth, children and Persons with Disability finds its way to influence the SDGs implementation. The PRFT and members of the CSOs Reference Group on SDGs works closely with the Ministry of Public Services Labour and Social Welfare that is responsible for coordinating the SDGs where we are members of the SDGs cluster committees. Through these clusters, PRFT directly engages and contributes to most SDGs-related processes.
Bringing together voices from different sections of society
Through the CSOs Reference working as a conduit to reach broad-based citizenry, the PRFT coordinates the production of Citizen Spotlight Reports, that highlight the citizens’ perceptions on the status of the SDGs implementation. To do this, PRFT uses the People’s Scorecard as a tool to gather all the necessary data. Given the representativeness of the CSOs Reference Group, the Leave No One Behind principles are put into practice.