“Transforming rural lives is about making the poorer lot to thrive with vibrant opportunity, where residents experience hope, opportunity and scope for advancing their life style”
Sustainable Livelihood is the bedrock of any society, which ensures the economic stability of its population the instances of deficit livelihood translates not only into more explicit issues like poverty, Malnutrition and alike but it have the lethal potential to usurp and rend apart that society, thereby catalyzing socio-economic and political conundrums of unforeseeable magnitude. Studies have revealed that “criminal activity increases as a result of poverty. In a recent study, it was found that poverty and criminal activity are independently related, with the disproportionate number of minorities living in poverty being a major reason for their high rates of criminal activity”. Poverty-Crime imbroglio forms a vicious cycle in which one feeds upon and is fed by the other. Thus the elimination of poverty and an attempt at creating sustainable and alternative sources of livelihood to abort the pernicious consequences that accompany poverty call for immediate attention and redressal.
Poverty is a global phenomenon with its effects ravaging the lives of people across the geographical divide. Global extreme poverty rose in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years as the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic compounded the forces of conflict and climate change, which were already slowing poverty reduction progress. About 100 million additional people are living in poverty as a result of the pandemic. More than 40 percent of the global poor live in economies affected by fragility, conflict and violence, and that number is expected to rise to 67 percent in the next decade. Those economies have just 10 percent of the world’s population.
More than 800 million people in India are considered poor. Most of them live in the countryside and keep afloat with odd jobs. The lack of employment which provides a livable wage in rural areas is driving many Indians into rapidly growing metropolitan areas such as Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore or Calcutta. There, most of them expect a life of poverty and despair in the mega-slums, made up of millions of corrugated ironworks, without sufficient drinking water supply, without garbage disposal and in many cases without electricity. The poor hygiene conditions are the cause of diseases such as cholera, typhus and dysentery, in which especially children suffer and die.
Livelihood has stayed in the top priorities of an organization and interventions in the field have been a regular phenomena. Understanding the importance and inevitability of sustainable livelihood for woman progress and prosperity, ELFA International has implemented numerous schemes, to uplift the economically marginalized and to provide creative livelihood opportunities to young entrepreneurs. Working alongside the people from rural, semi-urban, and urban areas ELFA International has formulated diversified set of schemes catering to the livelihood needs of youth, woman and deprived sections of society each according to their needs and available resources. Besides initiating and implementing programmes on its own, ELFA International has also played a pivotal role to act as a bridge and the point of contact between entrepreneurs, and the concern agencies. The advocacy part with the government is also being actively pursued and awareness camps for agriculturists, craftsman and the entrepreneurs are being organized now and then.
ELFA International has been working across the length and the breadth of UT for the conception and implementation of livelihood projects. From the establishment of Silai centres in various districts providing livelihood opportunities to woman, to the organization of numerous capacity building and training workshops, to nurture local entrepreneurs, ELFA International has explored diverse means and mediums to cater and uplift the livelihood issues faced by the people of UT. Working in the domain of capacity building among woman, ELFA International was responsible for implementing Netherlands Embassy project on women empowerment, in the aspirational districts of Kupwara and Baramulla recently. ELFA International has been time and again organizing training-cum-felicitation events not only to train leaders in the field of business and entrepreneurship but to also celebrate the success and impact of those having made an impact in the livelihood niche of the UT. ELFA International has also been actively engaged in extending the logistic and human resource support wherever required. Our interventions and efforts to alleviate the livelihood scenario of the UT have received widespread recognition and appreciation.
