This was one of the initial questions posed by Radha Rajkotia of the IRC as she began a recent presentation focused on the use of the sustainable livelihoods approach to improve the well-being of conflict-affected youth. The presentation was an element of a Washington Network for Children in Armed Conflict event and the question was far from unfounded.
To open the presentations, Felix Unogwu of Search for Common Ground silenced the crowd of over 50 attendees as each reflected on the stories of three conflict-affected young people. Though each demonstrated a sense hope, the comments of one young man from Liberia clearly illustrated the motivation for the event.
This paper reports on DFID-funded research by ITDG to develop analytical tools that help development practitioners understand livelihoods involving micro / small-scale enterprise (MSE). The research concerned the roles which:
- private-sector markets play in livelihoods of micro-entrepreneurs and small-scale producers
- technological change (including poor people's own adaptability) has on livelihood opportunities and outcomes
Poverty reduction is the ultimate objective of both the Market Development and Sustainable Livelihoods approaches. However, the means by which to achieve poverty reduction often differ under these approaches. Realising the need to find common grounds of understanding between the two approaches, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) organized a seminar on Making Markets Work for Poor (in short: M4P), looking for complementarities, divergences and synergies with other approaches to poverty reduction.
Time: 10:00AM - 12:00PM
You're invited to join the Washington Network on Children in Armed Conflict for a discussion exploring the linkages between youth, unemployment and security in post-conflict settings, an issue that demands our attention, as countries transitioning from crisis to development face broad challenges.
