The Search for Sustainable Livelihoods

  Credits

Acknowledgements

Thank you for taking the time to journey through this module. We hope you have found these accounts of local struggles towards sustainable livelihoods both interesting and potentially useful.

In preparing this module, we decided not to present a checklist of what sustainable livelihoods are. Rather, it is an attempt to present local people's perspectives on sustainable livelihoods. The projects highlighted here encompass achievements as well as disappointments. The projects' approaches and priorities may be different, but, they also share many common ideas.

Field projects are often presented as being unqualified successes. This sanitizes development, often romanticizes local people, and perpetuates a myth that solutions are easy and at hand. If the problems were truly so simple, we would not still be grappling for answers.

This module attempts to let real voices shape our understanding of what sustainable livelihoods are. The elegant models are not working. Perhaps it is time to start afresh. We need to embrace the creative, holistic, and participatory. We need to listen, and open our minds to new perspectives.

This module is the product of an ongoing collaboration between Development Alternatives (DA) and ENDA-TM through the Sustainable Development Communications Network. It involved numerous professional staff from both NGOs in its creation. Two facilitators, Katherine Hay and Julie Vaudrin-Charette, spent six months working in India and Senegal respectively to coordinate the module creation. Julie and Katherine worked at all stages of the module's creation including project design, research, project documentation and reporting, writing, and editing.

Particular thanks go to the villagers in India and Senegal who shared their stories with us.

IISD provided information technology support and undertook the information architecture, graphic design, and HTML coding for the module. All work was made possible by funding from the International Development Research Center (IDRC) through the Sustainable Development Communications Network.

The Sustainable Development Communications Network is a global network of leading sustainable development organizations seeking to accelerate the implmentation of sustainable development through broader, integrated information and communications.

To learn more about sustainable livelihoods, please feel free to contact us:

Development Alternatives

ENDA-TM

If you are interested in contacting a specific program team from ENDA, detailed contact information is available on the credits page of the ENDA sustainable livelihoods module.

Sustainable Development Communications Network (SDCN)