It is now widely accepted that promotion of large number of livelihoods, especially for the rural poor and women has emerged as the most significant development challenge of the century. Some estimates show that more than 12 to 15 million new livelihoods need to be promoted every year in India alone, to ensure near full employment.

However, two significant bottlenecks in promoting large numbers of livelihoods, especially for the rural poor do exist, such as: inadequate availability of knowledge base on how to support/ promote large number of livelihoods, and inadequate availability of trained human resources who can participate in this work effectively.

ILRT has developed an unique livelihood education program for practitioners “Fundamentals of Livelihood Promotion”. 

The major objectives of the course are –

• To familiarize with various updated conceptual frameworks and practical approaches to Livelihood Promotion documented in the 4th Edition of the Resource book on Livelihood Promotion
• To be equipped with the tools and methodologies to understand the household level livelihood portfolios and the social, political and economic context of livelihoods
• To build ability to work with practitioners to design situationally appropriate livelihood interventions ”

Course contents

• Building Livelihood Perspective of Development
• Building Livelihood Perspective of a Household
• Environment and livelihoods
• Meaning of Livelihood and Difference between Livelihood Promotion and Income Generation Approaches
• Various building blocks for understanding livelihoods