has moved up in priority, creating more comprehensive plans addressing poverty specifically than ever before. There has also been an increase in “pro-poor” spending within the health, education and transportation sectors. Due to the demands from the donors to show results, there has been an increase in poverty monitoring through participatory poverty assessments and household surveys. Civil society involvement One major function of the PRS is to encourage more participation from the population. The purpose of civil society involvement is to increase the influence of stakeholders in policy creation, program implementation, resource allocation and priority setting. The intent here is to cultivate a degree of national consensus, thereby creating a poverty reduction strategy that is more representative of stakeholder's interests. The idea behind this is that the PRS will then be owned by the population and will be sustainable, as it suits the needs and capacities of the country. Ownership Ownership of the PRSP by the government and population is a very important goal of PRS. It addresses the ineffectiveness of donor imposition of policy conditions from the outside, a common approach of lending organizations. One way the PRS process encourages ownership is by having governments create their own PRSPs in close consultation with the population. This allows them to take ownership over, and thereby stick to, the strategies they and their population deem necessary to improve conditions in their counties. Additionally, the hope is that in developing a PRSP together, a country will gain a more comprehensive understanding of the poverty issues it faces. The PRSP process is also meant to encourage government leadership in implementing their own strategies by allowing them to allocate the aid money themselves in accordance with the strategies they had drawn up in the PRSP. The emphasis on government leadership stems from the problems that arise when donors establish their own strategy implementation agencies within the client countries, bypassing state agencies and therefore undermining the development of state capacity as well as creating a dependency on aid organizations. Formulation process Poverty analysis The PRSP process begins with an analysis of poverty within the country, taking into account both quantitative and qualitative data. This analysis becomes the basis for the poverty reduction strategy as it indicates the priority issues. It is important at this stage for the government to initiate civil participation, though to the degree with which this is done varies by country. Participatory