Sustainable Livelihoods Approach

Teaching new designs for traditional handicrafts

In settled communities, Sevalanka offers specialized services for sustainable livelihood development. A livelihood can include a number of activities, not all of which involve money. For example, a family may cultivate a home garden to produce food for family consumption, earn a small income by renting a piece of land, work as seasonal agricultural laborers, make bricks, sell eggs from their poultry, occasionally work on a construction or road repair site, and receive money each month from their daughter who works in a garment factory. All of these things together are their livelihood.


A sustainable livelihood:

  • Enables a family to cope with and recover from stresses or shocks
  • Maintains or improves assets and capabilities
  • Maintains or improves the natural resource base
  • Does not undermine the livelihoods of others
  • Provides for future generations

Rather than focusing on problems and 'needs,' we help people identify individual and community assets and find ways of using and increasing these assets to develop sustainable livelihoods. These might include social assets (e.g. social networks, self-help groups, CBOs), natural assets (e.g. land, sea, rocks, trees), human assets (e.g. knowledge, skills, experience, mental and physical health), physical assets (e.g. roads, buildings, equipment, telecommunications) and financial assets (e.g. savings, pensions, remittances, credit). We help households, producer groups and CBOs assess their resources, plan and achieve their livelihood goals and monitor change.

Support Services

Sevalanka focuses on livelihood activities which are shared by the majority of the rural poor in a particular geographical area. We have sector specialists in the following areas:

Although our main focus is on common livelihood activities, we recognize that most rural households support themselves through a wide range of activities. Each of these supplemental income generating activities is usually done by relatively few households within a community, but they can make a major contribution to household income. Depending on local interest, we also provide specialized support services for:

Sevalanka, Seva Finance and SEDCO work together to provide an integrated package of services that contribute to sustainable livelihood development. These include:

    Working with fishing communities for a sustainable future

  • Institutional and financial management services (e.g. analysis of assets, constraints and opportunities; strategic planning; institutional capacity building; systems for savings, revolving loan funds, financial management, collection and quality control; shareholder structures)

  • Production-oriented services (e.g. training, extension, learning workshops, study and exchange visits)

  • Microfinance services (e.g. affordable capital to invest in production or new enterprises and smooth out seasonal variations in income)

  • Direct trade linkages (e.g. access to information, working capital and trade agreements to overcome trade monopolies and increase share of value chain)

  • Value chain investments (e.g. investment capital and advisory support to invest in storage, transport, processing, packaging, certification, labeling or retail outlets)

For more information on Sevalanka livelihood services, please contact amanda@sevalanka.org. For more information on Seva Finance, please see their website or contact renuka@sevafinance.com. For more information on SEDCO, please see their website or contact info@sedco.lk.