The UK’s Sure Start is set to tackle the cycle of social exclusion and child poverty through improved childcare, early education, health and family support. The programme utilises panel data rather than aggregate cross-sectional data in order to track the progress of the participating children. Doing so enables area-based comparisons of the rates of progress of child development over the years, resulting in the identification of disadvantaged areas and the services in need.

Participatory budgeting implemented from 2001 to 2004 in São Paulo, Brazil, is an example of transformative participation. The exercise is a telling in two regards. First, by relying on an affirmative action methodology, it was institutionally designed to encourage and sustain, throughout the entire cycle, the participation of historically disadvantaged groups or segments of the population: Afro-Brazilians, senior citizens, children and adolescents, youth, the LGBT community, women, indigenous groups, the homeless and people with disabilities.

The Multidimensional Continuum for the Homeless in the US is a complex continuum put in place to assist people living in shelters transfer into transitional houses, get ready for jobs, undergo drug and alcohol treatment, (re)establish contacts with families, and finally find a permanent home alongside long-term support services to help ensure they remain housed. Cutting across sectors, time and levels, this continuum is argued to be as multidimensional and transversal as the exclusion it strives to combat.