CARE's Livelihoods Approach: Household Livelihood Security (HLS)

CARE is an international NGO. Its organisational mandate is to focus its programmes on helping the poorest and most vulnerable. The livelihoods approach is its primary programming framework. It is used in its relief and development work in rural and urban settings.
CARE International adapted the livelihoods approach in 1994. The main initiation for this shift came from the food security side of the organisation, informed by Amartya Sen's work on termentitlements.


"CARE began to move from a concern for regional and national food security to a consideration of households and individual food security issues. At the household level, the concern shifted from "food first" or food production to a wider focus on the ability of households to secure the food that they required. This then led to a widening of the scope and recognition that food was just one of the range of factors that determined poor people's decision." (Carney et al. 1999)


This led to the development of the concept of Household Livelihood Security (HLS). The approach is deemed sufficiently comprehensive to face up to the challenges of large-scale poverty and yet flexible enough to address context-specific constraints.


The use of the HLS approach helps CARE to focus its efforts on individuals and families in the world's poorest communities and to work towards enabling them to live in dignity and security. CARE sees this framework as an effective way of improving intersectoral coordination and thus increasing the impact of its work.


CARE identifies three fundamental attributes of livelihoods from the definition of Chambers and Conway (1991) (see above):


  • the possession of human capitals (education, skills, health and psychological orientation);
  • access to tangible and intangible assets;
  • the existence of economic activities.

The interaction between these attributes defines the livelihood strategy a household chooses to pursue and is thus central to CARE's Livelihood Model.




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