Strategies
Livelihood Resource Mapping & Institution Mapping
A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living. A livelihood is sustainable when it can manage with and recover from stress and shocks, and provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for the Urban Poor, and which contributes net benefits to other livelihoods at the local and national levels and in the short and the long term.” The Village Service Trust guided to the new entrepreneur to start the enterprise in the following 2 strategies
The assets are divided into five categories and together these assets allow people to adopt different livelihood strategies in order to achieve their livelihood objectives.
Includes skills, knowledge, the physical and mental strengths needed to work and take up employment.
Includes the social resources which people can draw upon: for instance, formal and informal relationships with family, friends and neighbours as well as networks such as forums, CBO’s and groups within the wider community.
Includes decent housing, affordable transport, work clothes or equipment, basic white goods, a computer, a sewing machine, and so on (in more rural contexts, for example the work done by Oxfam with crofters in Scotland, this asset is known as “natural assets” and includes things like irrigation and access to water supply, tree cover and seeds available, and so on).
Also sometimes known as “place based assets”, these include local public services, facilities and amenities such as resource and community centers, libraries, local organizations and various projects as well as the level of people’s engagement, participation and involvement within community activities beyond their household and immediate family and friends.
Includes earned income, savings, pensions, credit facilities, state (welfare) benefits, child maintenance received and so on. A key principle of the approach is to recognize that these assets are all interlinked and need to be considered together as a whole in order to understand the best livelihoods strategies to employee
As a person’s assets increase, they are better able to protect themselves from shocks and their vulnerability decreases. The idea of the “livelihoods ladder” was developed as a way of understanding these transitions. As a person builds their asset base, their position on the ladder moves up, but if they subsequently lose assets they risk falling back down the ladder. It may be useful when using the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to identify the appropriate benchmarks that help determine the transitions between the different rungs on the ladder and thus make it easier to categories households. For more detail on how this could be done, see the Livelihoods Ladder and Verifying the Findings tools in the Toolkit. In a nutshell, though, the ladder is structured as follows:
| Livelihood | Sustainable | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Accumulating | Life is going well – the household owns and controls an increasing range of assets and can cope with a range of shocks. | ✔ | ✔ |
| Adapting Coping Surviving | Life is OK – the household owns and controls some assets, especially financial, but is not accumulating and has potential vulnerability to major shocks, for example loss of employment. | ✔ | ✘ |
| Coping | Getting by – the household can cope with minor shocks but not major ones. There is often either a total or partial reliance on benefits and while household members may work, they usually do so informally | ✘ | ✔ |
| Surviving | Life is a constant battle – the household is extremely vulnerable to both minor and major external shocks and is likely to be in debt with few social or personal assets. | ✘ | ✘ |
If used appropriately, the Livelihoods Approach can provide an ongoing planning and evaluating tool. Monitoring progress can provide the information we need to develop work to best meet the needs of participants. Equally the issues we uncover during the lifetime of our work may lead to:
Entrepreneurship Development Programme (EDP) is a programme which helps in developing entrepreneurial abilities. The skills that are required to run a business successfully is developed among the students through this programme. Sometimes, students may have skills but it requires polishing and incubation. This programme is perfect for them. The Village Service Trust developing the programme consists of a structured training process to develop an individual as an entrepreneur. It helps the person to acquire skills and necessary capabilities to play the role of an entrepreneur effectively.
EDP is an effort of converting a person to an entrepreneur by passing him through thoroughly structured training. An entrepreneur is required to respond appropriately to the market and he/she is also required to understand the business needs. The skills needed are varied and they need to be taken care in the best possible way. EDP is not just a training programme but it is a complete process to make the possible transformation of an individual into an entrepreneur. The Village Service Trust also guides the individuals on how to start the business and effective ways to sustain it successfully.
The Village Service Trust primarily plays four roles to help an individual to become an entrepreneur. They are:
It aims at influencing people in large number to be the entrepreneur. This includes:
It helps in the following ways:
It aims at providing an effective safeguard to businesses to sustain against the cut-throat market competition. This includes:
It aims at upgrading the socio-economic status of the public and includes:
To set up the Entrepreneurship Development Program (EDP) on your campus or in your city write us a mail at vsttrust2005@gmail.com alternatively you can contact us using the contact link below. Our team would love to support you in any way possible.
