Livelihood: Fights poverty, hunger and ploughing prosperity

Why does restoring dignity matter in fighting on behalf of the poor? Dignity sustains the poor while defeating the circumstances of poverty. Sustainable livelihood for all especially for extreme poor women and men is the solution.

Livelihood for extreme poor: Right and Access to transform lives

"We must be bold. We must challenge, innovate and create if we are to truly reframe the future for the millions less fortunate than ourselves, and this may happen only with evidence and technology-based livelihood programmes for poor through effective participatory planning, monitoring and capacity building. Impact livelihood demonstrates how we are turning those words into actions"- Amalendu Pal

AIPA’s livelihood initiative targets extreme poor and encourage to be own entrepreneur to grow their business, allow their children’s access to healthier protein-rich meals, clean water, education, healthcare, and, ultimately, a sustainable community in which to grow up.  But that’s not all.  It offers its entrepreneurs the consistent skill building and business basic support necessary for transformed lives.  Each entrepreneur learns about knowledge sharing, intention to extend help, and desire to transform their community.

Goal 1: Asset Building: Building productive assets and social capital with a sense of ownership: Creating platform for regular source of income and reducing risks like migration and social hazards

Goal 2: Empowerment: From exclusion to empowerment: Women’s effective participation in livelihood planning, social protection and implementation

Goal 3: Knowledge and Skills Enhancement: Transfer of knowledge and productive skills: Ensuring leadership enterprise and effective governance

Goal 4: Gender justice: Ensuring gender justice and sustainable livelihood

Objectives:

• Creating access to economic resources for men and women

• Making access adequate amounts of nutritious food 

• Promote right and access to food

• Promote small-scale economic development activities including agriculture and livestock

• Build community participation

Approach:

Food Security: Addressing the root causes of food insecurity through multi-sectrol programming:

Our approach considers stresses on vulnerable populations such as lack of infrastructure, low agricultural yields, or poor health status—alongside complicating and compounding shocks and stresses, such as increased climate variability, poor governance, or social marginalization. Our food security work reflects approaches from all the sectors in which we work—from migration, economic and market development, and governance to agriculture, public health, nutrition, water, sanitation, and hygiene—as well as the mainstreaming lenses essential to any good programming, such as climate resilience, gender, youth, social inclusion, and ecological sustainability . The comprehensiveness of this approach ensures the true causes of food insecurity. We invest in long-term food security strategies that likely incorporate many programmes and strive to ensure our approach is applicable in different contexts, from development situations to humanitarian emergencies.

Cultivating Economic Opportunity for Poor Women and Independence

Field experience proves that enhanced economic opportunity, a critical factor to improve women well-being, and supportive social dynamics to reinforce and promote secure, productive, and just communities. Economic opportunity has enabled and shown results in many ways including by ensuring access to business and financial services, gainful employment, technical resources, enterprise inputs, and well-functioning of local markets.

Impact: Livelihood Initiative for the Extreme-poor women

AIPA’s Initiative (Pilot): To have scale and impact AIPA’s team, identified 400 underprivileged women workers. These workers belonged to families whose daily income was less than Rs.50/-. The team developed a mentorship programme between the women workers and a well-networked local aid association, who provided guidance on the scientific ways of cultivating tea leaves and marketing those directly to the tea factories. After the two-year program, the women were self-reliant, earning approximately four thousand rupees a month, approximately three time of their previous monthly income. To top it all, the women took upon themselves the role of mentors and carried this model forward to another 500 families.