Livelihoods Innovations

Aside from emergencies, our continuing challenge remains the improvement of families’ long-term financial security by introducing new activities and strategies as well as expanding proven interventions, to make a positive impact on children of low-income households. To this end, Save the Children partners with specialized technical providers and research institutions to design and pilot new methodologies and to closely monitor their impact on improving conditions for poor families. Through testing and documentation of innovative approaches, we are better able to implement programs and help families protect and grow their income and assets. In addition, measuring the results of new interventions enables us to evaluate their potential for implementation at scale.

Group Savings and Social Capital for Improved Food Security

STRIVE Mozambique is a USAID-funded operational research project designed to investigate the impact of household participation in Village Savings and Loans (VSL) groups and Ajuda Mútua (mutual help) rotating labor schemes on the nutritional status of their children. VSL groups provide participants with a mechanism for asset building, income generation and risk mitigation, leading to their purchase of more and better foods to feed their children. Our early pilot work with Ajuda Mútua (“mutual help”) rotating labor groups resulted in growth in participants’ household income, an increased level of trust among participants and a greater belief in collective self.

Savings Products for Youth

Savings products enable young people to build up resources for their future and acquire positive life-long attitudes and financial habits. Accumulated savings allows young people to pay educational fees, obtain access to health care services or start and run income-earning activities. However, effective savings products for poor and/or vulnerable youth are virtually nonexistent in developing countries. Save the Children has teamed up with the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and the New American Foundation (NAF) to design, implement and test personal savings products in four developing countries and document their impact on financial institutions and their young clients. Currently in its start-up phase, this program is focusing on project and research design, and plans for implementation of the multi-country pilot. We expect that this initiative will significantly advance the development community’s thinking on how to help young people build the basis for their economic future.

Micro Health Insurance

Each year, 150 million people globally suffer financial catastrophe because of the cost of health care. In the world’s poorest countries, less than three percent of the population has access to health insurance. For millions of families, a single illness can deplete their assets and push them further into a cycle of poverty from which they may never recover. In The families of Nepal – as in many areas where Save the Children works – may be forced to skip meals or pull their children from school in order to cover medical expenses, while others may choose not to access needed care for fear of putting their families further at risk. As a model for providing health insurance to poor families, Save the Children is leading an international effort to provide affordable, community-designed health insurance in Nepal. Save the Children and its technical partner, the Micro Insurance Academy, are developing health insurance products for families in two districts of Nepal. Micro health insurance enhances community empowerment, local ownership and focuses on high-impact intervention. Communities are able to select their preferred health insurance benefit package according to their needs and ability and willingness to pay. The implementation phase of this pilot program is expected to insure approximately 50,000 people in rural Nepal and will include a rigorous assessment of the program’s impact on children. It will also assess prospects to reach up to one million more families.

Improving Health and Nutrition in Pastoralist Communities

Although livestock interventions are currently used to improve animal milk supply, efforts to increase children’s milk consumption and improved nutritional outcomes are scarce. In order to explore and build the evidence base for interventions that benefit pastoralist children’s well-being, Save the Children USA, in partnership with the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University and Save the Children UK has created Milk Matters. Milk Matters seeks to improve the nutritional status of pastoral children through increased access to an adequate supply of milk. Having completed Phase I of the project, we plan under Phase II to test livelihood interventions for improving children’s resilience to drought and malnutrition in pastoralist regions. Intervention will include veterinary packages that improve camel and goat health and nutrition, and livestock redistribution or restocking. 

Another key objective is to contribute to national policy guidance on pastoralist nutrition. Save the Children anticipates that this program will improve conditions for pastoralists’ families and provide invaluable data for interventions in other regions that face similar challenges in food security.

Index-Based Weather Insurance

Drought is a significant problem for farmers in Mali who grow maize and other cereal crops. Farmers need access to capital in order to improve their use of productivity-increasing technologies such as improved seeds and fertilizers. In addition to causing devastating crop failure, drought places small farmers at risk: they must sell their harvest and repay loans. As a result, drought has made it difficult for lenders to provide working capital to farmers. Save the Children is exploring ways to reduce the risks to farmers’ crops so that capital and technology can be used to promote economic growth for small farmers. We recently completed a six-month project that analyzed the conditions for developing a weather insurance market in Mali to transfer risk in a cost-effective manner. While the research identified challenges in establishing a strong correlation between rainfall levels and crop yields, the findings open up the possibility of designing insurance contracts for farmers based on other index-related approaches. Save the Children plans to continue to investigate and test new products that can be used in rural communities in Mali and elsewhere to protect the assets of small farmers.

Last Updated October 2010