Livelihood

Livelihoods consists of both generation of income as well as the ownership of assets that reduces the vulnerability of marginalized communities. AIF is focusing on addressing two trends that are keeping millions of people in poverty through its livelihood grantmaking. First, a majority of the population is still dependent upon the agricultural sector for their income and the income derived from farming is too little to improve their economic status. The rural poor often are unable to save and do not have access to credit to invest in creating assets. As a result, there is overexploitation of natural resources such as water and forests in people’s attempts to increase inputs into their agricultural production. Second, as rural people are unable to live off their incomes in rural areas they migrate to urban centers in search of employment that will sustain them. Most of these people are unskilled and so find only low-paying manual labor and they also lack the capital to establish themselves in the cities.

AIF’s livelihood grants program in India focuses on strategic interventions to improve the quality of livelihood opportunities currently available and to provide alternative livelihood opportunities to ensure that poor people in rural and urban areas have adequate resources to sustain themselves. The grants focus on innovations and scaling-up of effective models of improving livelihoods as well as building the capacity of NGOs working on these issues through research and dissemination of best practices information. AIF is particularly focused on the empowerment of women as increasing their incomes and assets has tremendous multiplier effects on the socio-economic indicators of their families and communities.