One of the greatest tragedies of extreme poverty is its intergenerational transmission. To combat this, The Hunger Project (THP) is scaling up their "epicenter strategy" to 112 communities in the Eastern Region in Ghana. These epicenters are a cluster of villages that work together to promote health, education, food security and economic development.  The centerpiece of the strategy is the epicenter building that houses the community's programs and services, including health clinics, a microfinance center, a library, food banks and classrooms. 

The epicenter strategy mobilizes villages to take control of their development and hosts several empowerment and social capital programs, such as literacy classes, women's empowerment, HIV awareness and agricultural training.  THP's vision is that participating villages will become more involved in political and community activities and microfinance, embrace gender equality and change health perceptions and practices.

IPA is partnering with THP to evaluate the long term-impact of this epicenter strategy on health, nutrition, income, the role of women, social cohesion and education. While THP plans to cover the entire Eastern Region, it is neither feasible nor desirable to build all 112 epicenters at once. A lottery is conducted within each district to determine which of the 112 communities are offered an epicenter in the early years of the expansion (treatment group).  Communities that do not win the lottery for early invitation may receive an invitation several years later (control group).  A pre-intervention baseline survey of approximately 4000 households with over 20,000 individuals and a follow-up survey of the same households are being conducted over the five year experimental period.  The longitudinal nature of the survey allows us to examine if the effects of epicenters are sustained over time and whether or not the epicenter strategy is financially sustainable.