CARE’s livelihood sector programmes centre around women smallholders, business-women, employees and homeworkers belonging to poor and marginalised communities, with the objective of empowering them with knowledge and enhanced access to inputs, services, technologies and opportunities. We facilitate the building of an enabling and gender-transformative environment for conducting economic activities by engaging men and other influential actors, both private and public, who are involved in market value chains and entitlement delivery. Helping women from marginalised communities to earn their livelihoods using a variety of non-agricultural avenues is one of the core mandates of CARE’s livelihood sector programmes.

We focus on improving access and control of women from marginalised communities over productive resources, services and opportunities; enhancing their food and nutrition security; and improving their abilities in climate change resilience. Reaching out to over 1,85,546 individuals reached directly through livelihood interventions across 11 states, out of which 130,293 are women, CARE India has built the capacities of individuals and collectives. By supporting various collectives, the interventions address barriers such as unequal power relations and enable the transformation of gender norms at multiple levels.

CARE India works with women smallholder farmers in Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal to support sustainable and climate resilient agricultural practices, improve nutrition security and build climate change resilience against various kinds of shocks and stresses. To bring about holistic change in the areas of resilience and nutrition, it is necessary to sustain resources for future, promote individual and institutional capacities and transform vulnerability to risks in the areas of agriculture and livelihood. Our work also focusses on building asset-base, knowledge, information on institutional entitlements and governance, to improve climate change resilience and nutrition security.