How do we design an MPI? Clearly, policy makers should be deeply involved. It is equally important to consult people and communities experiencing poverty, to ensure that their expertise and knowledge informs the definition of multidimensional poverty, and shapes the policy responses. Participatory exercises are used to:

• Understand the dimensions, indicators, weights and cutoffs that poor people use to define poverty.
• User personal experience to understand why each type of deprivation is important.
• See how problems affect very different communities (urban/rural, young/old, east/west)
• Recognise how poor communities are agents in the fight against poverty.

El Salvador provides a very good example of how participatory exercises can be used to inform the development of a national MPI.