Enabling farm­ers to identify value chains and dir­ectly access mar­kets in order to gen­er­ate income to raise stand­ards of liv­ing. Also, diver­si­fy­ing income through the cre­ation of small busi­nesses such as com­munity based tour­ism.

Food secur­ity is a pri­or­ity for sub­sist­ence farm­ers but this alone doesn’t break the cycle of poverty. Farm­ers need dis­pos­able incomes in order to pay for basic ser­vices such as edu­ca­tion and health­care. More often than not women are tasked with these respons­ib­il­it­ies — read more here.

We sup­port farm­ers to gen­er­ate income from their sur­plus agri­cul­tural pro­duce, through enabling farm­ers to identify value chains and group together to dir­ectly access mar­kets. We work together with com­munity mar­ket groups to adapt their sus­tain­able live­li­hood strategies to meet mar­ket demands and to max­im­ise their income gen­er­a­tion potential.

We have also been encour­aging farm­ers to diver­sify their income streams, through encour­aging involve­ment in a range of live­li­hood activ­it­ies and even intro­du­cing eco­tour­ism to a few pic­tur­esque vil­lages – which gives a cash incent­ive for con­serving the environment.

We help com­munit­ies to estab­lish sav­ings groups to ensure that all bene­fi­ciar­ies have access to a small sup­ply of dis­pos­able income to invest or use in an emer­gency, and as an import­ant means to provide bene­fi­ciar­ies with the abil­ity to pur­chase neces­sary mater­i­als for the con­tinu­ation, repair, and/or expan­sion of live­li­hood activ­it­ies upon CRDT pro­ject completion.

Focus on income gen­er­a­tion ensures that depend­ency on nat­ural resources is broken for the long as well as the short term.

Read more about just one of the spe­cies we’re try­ing to pro­tect from destruc­tion with our work along the Mekong — the Irrawaddy Dol­phin.