"OOTA AITA?" Challenges of livelihood Interventions in the Kanakanala Watershed.
A (not so serious) look at India Vs. Switzerland in 2003.
Preface : To Eat or not to Eat, "OOTA AITA?"
Introduction

 

Home-Shopping vs. CARE Approach

Looking at CARE's three fundamental attributes of livelihoods (the possession of human capabilities, access to tangible and intangible assets and the existence of economic activities), it is obvious that the focus of home-shopping and other MUNJAVU-activities are on economic activities. CARE would term this a livelihood promotion. Other MUNJAVU interventions, such as Gold loans or Grain Bank, are more of a livelihood protection, helping to prevent a decline in household livelihood security. Last year SAMUHA has distributed fodder as a relief action, which would go under the third of CARE's activity types, livelihood provisioning, bringing relief in emergency situations.

MUNJAVU can also claim to be working in CARE's three focus areas of activity:

. Personal empowerment: interventions focused on expanding human capacity, and hence the overall resource (asset) and income base of the poor.

. Social empowerment: interventions such as education, community mobilisation, political advocacy.

. Service delivery: expanding access to basic services for the poor.
Thus MUNJAVU could use CARE's livelihood approach quite easily, if they desired to document their strategy better. The challenge would be to define their idea of sustainable livelihoods and to document the changes in their beneficiaries' livelihoods.

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