Livelihoods

By a 'livelihood' Oxfam ultimately means how people make their living, but it is more than that. People need to have reliable and permanent sources of food, income, and employment.

Poor people need access to national and international markets (for example getting a better price for their produce), they need to work collectively, and governments and other organisations need to implement fair rules.

The issue of livelihoods isn’t just about trade, though. It also encompasses such topics as lifestyle (nomadic or sedentary, rural or urban, etc), agriculture, land ownership and access, and how all these are affected by conflict, climate change, and other natural disasters.

Oxfam’s livelihoods programme seeks to help poor people have a sustainable livelihood, including making a living, living in a safe environment, with housing, clean water, and sufficient food.

Over two thirds of the three billion people who live in poverty rely on small-scale agriculture for their food and wages.

Oxfam’s experience and analysis of working with people who have the fewest rights leads us to believe that for poor people to achieve greater power in national and international markets and trade (e.g. getting a better price for their produce), they need to be organised in order to reach potential trading partners, and governments and other organisations need to change the trade rules to make them work for poor people.  International trade can be a powerful force for poverty reduction, but international trade rules are currently loaded against poor people and producers (Make Trade Fair campaign). Oxfam believes that economies must have rules to ensure that economic growth helps current and future generations achieve equity, rather than just being an end in itself (in other words, Oxfam doesn’t believe in free-market economics, but that markets need to be managed to the benefit of poor people).

• People need skills and knowledge (for example farming techniques), and resources (for example seeds and tools) to make a living.

Oxfam’s livelihoods programme aims to:

• Promote the development of local and global markets to help ensure sustainable economic growth that benefits poor people;
  
• Ensure that women in particular, and small-scale producers, gain greater access to and control over resources such as money, tools, skills, and knowledge, to pursue their work, and that the unpaid caring, household, and community work, done mainly by women, is recognised and invested in as an important contributor to livelihoods;
  
• Work to strengthen organisations and coalitions of producers, employees, trade unions, and women’s groups to enable them to improve their livelihoods, and influence and hold to account their governments, large companies, and international institutions (World Bank, EU, WTO).