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Background to the Seminar Series: |
Sustainable livelihoods approaches offer development professionals
a means of focusing on poor people's priorities and addressing
factors that constrain their ability to forge livelihood strategies.
They build on the best practice of development professionals
over many years in addressing poverty and empowerment issues.
In 2000, DFID supported four fora in different parts of the
UK, in an attempt to foster more discussion of SL approaches
and to encourage their adoption by development professionals.
Consultants, academics and other development professionals had
the opportunity to scrutinise the approaches and discuss their
potential relevance to their work.
The
DFID sustainable livelihoods approach has continued to grow
in significance within DFID and other development agencies.
This and the success of the fora held in 2000 prompted DFID
to commission a second seminar series to build more understanding
of the approach amongst development professionals outside
of the organisation.
The
participants of the first set of seminars recommended more
case study material. Of the four main presentations at each
of the current series, at least two have been of case studies
which, if not demonstrating SL principles, allow participants
the opportunity to re-examine the material with a sustainable
livelihoods 'lens'.
The
emphasis has been on exploring common ground between SL approaches
and the work of participants. The current seminar series has
been organised to focus on the potential value of SL approaches
to different areas of development practice, such as governance,
rural poverty, private sector and enterprise development,
urban poverty and so on. This may serve to emphasise the non-sectoral
nature of SL approaches and the opportunity they offer for
holistic analysis and appreciation of the issues that give
rise to poverty.
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