THE CHALLENGE OF RURAL POVERTY
Nearly 75% of the world’s people who live on $1 or less per day live and work in rural areas. Although urban poverty is more often the focus of public attention, hidden is the rural poverty that drives it. Around the world impoverished people in rural areas face enormous challenges. Not only do they confront limited economic opportunities and underdeveloped markets, but they also tend to have less access to public infrastructure and services such as health, sanitation and education, and are less able to engage in advocacy with decision makers. Resource pressure and environmental degradation create additional challenges to rural communities and their livelihoods, exacerbating conflict prone situations and accelerating rural-urban migration flows.
LWR believes that alleviating suffering and poverty requires a focus on the needs of rural populations, and has committed to focusing its work in rural areas in target countries around the world. LWR’s constituents in the U.S., many of whom themselves have rural farming roots, help make this work possible through their financial, material resources and advocacy support.
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Sustainable Rural Development
LWR’s development programs build, increase and expand core community assets – enduring resources such as labor and skills, health and a sustainable environment – needed to pursue productive lives. As such, LWR supports development programs that attack the root causes of suffering—the environmental, political, social and economic factors that can make certain communities vulnerable to crises or trap them in endemic poverty. The goal is to identify local solutions to poverty that can be replicated and scaled up to reach an ever increasing number of people.
Rather than tackling each symptom of poverty one by one, LWR instead looks holistically at innovative approaches to foster sustainable livelihoods and communities based on asset building. We apply our Sustainable Rural Development programming in the context of our related work in Risk Management and Peacebuilding and Justice. All LWR’s work attempts to both meet the needs of and respect the rights of impoverished peoples. Through our work with Risk Management, programs aim at enabling communities to identify and manage their individual and collective risks in order to increase their resilience – which in turn improves their ability to further develop their core assets. Our work in Peacebuilding stresses lifting up community voices, and empowering communities to work for peace and justice – and strong core assets are critical to that process.
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A Holistic Approach to Poverty Reduction
In its work to build sustainable communities, LWR focuses on increasing and expanding core assets in three broad areas: livelihoods, environment and health.
Livelihoods
Core to the communities’ development is their capacity for productive work. Agricultural production, and access to financing, collective bargaining, and the market are all critical community assets. LWR works to increase and expand these assets by:
- Ensuring productive and profitable agriculture and livestock: LWR works to help farmers diversify and increase crop yields, develop organic farming and integrated pest management systems and techniques, and improve livestock management.
- Building and strengthening microenterprise: LWR understands that access to capital, business development and collective bargaining capacity are critical to rural livelihoods. As such, its programming supports projects in microfinance, small business development, and institution strengthening for cooperatives, unions and networks. Alliances with credit and lending institutions, in ways that are mutually beneficial, are a key focus.
- Increasing fair trade and market access: In addition to supporting improved production and business development, LWR works with local partners to help increase marketability and market access at the local, regional, national and international levels. LWR also works to link partners in the field with fair trade initiatives and partners in the United States and Europe – just one aspect of enabling the rural poor to earn a living with dignity in ways that are capable of withstanding the challenges of, and taking advantage of, the opportunities afforded by globalization.
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Environment/Sustainable Resources
In addition to productive work, central to the community capacity is its ability to protect and control its natural resources. LWR’s work focuses on:
- Ensuring a safe and sustainable environment: LWR works to support community efforts to improve and protect their natural resources, especially those that are vital to livelihoods. Reforestation, soil conservation, watershed protection and irrigation, organic farming, and the use of alternatives to chemical fertilizers and insecticides are all elements in LWR’s efforts to promote good stewardship of the earth and ensure sustainable community–based natural resources necessary for both human living environments and agricultural production.
- Expanding community understanding of environmental issues and impact: LWR works with partners on environmental education programs that help communities develop strategies for sustainable use and protection of natural resources.
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Health
In order for communities to be productive and sustainable they need healthy foundations. If people cannot work due to illness, or must sacrifice productive hours searching for clean water, the community’s asset base is eroded, increasing the obstacles to development. LWR works to build community health assets by:
- Promoting good health: LWR works with communities to strengthen their capacities to provide basic community health promotion, mother-child healthcare, and to prevent infectious disease.
- Ensuring adequate clean water: Ensuring community access to sufficient quantity and quality of water for human consumption and agricultural needs is a critical component of healthy, vibrant communities. LWR works with partners to address water security by developing water harvesting systems, promoting watershed management, protecting springs and water sources, and reducing water contamination.
- Combating HIV/AIDS: HIV/AIDS has devastated and disproportionately affected the word’s poor. LWR works with partners to increase HIV prevention efforts, provide social and economic assistance to people living with AIDS – with special help for orphans and vulnerable children – and support advocacy efforts for justice for those infected and affected by the disease.
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