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 entitlements.
"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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