This report describes the rationale and design of a project that will carefully implement and evaluate an innovative program — called Learn$ave — that aims to help low-income Canadians build savings for use in enhancing their labour market skills through adult education and micro-enterprise development.

Learn$ave was an adaptation of an anti-poverty program that has already been implemented in some parts of the U.S. and, more recently, in three Canada cities. Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) offer a generous matching contribution for every dollar that participants save on their own. The underlying hypothesis, popularized by Michael Sherraden (1991), is that saving will lead them to change their economic behaviour in ways that will lead them out of poverty.