Teach Basic Survival Trends

THE letter dated 29 June 2012, with the title ‘End Children’s Hunger’ has reference. When I went through the letter, two aspects came into my mind. (1) Lack of understanding that many of us might have about the livelihoods of the communities in our country, especially in the rural areas. (2) Lack of vision on how to improve the livelihood of our communities, in cases that the main sources of livelihoods fail due to many circumstances.

However, it looks like little might have been done before to link the two aspects mentioned above and that might have resulted in the cases of hunger and malnutrition deaths in the south of Namibia. But the problem might not be limited only to the south. Many areas in the country might have experienced the same shock.
The issue here is, is there any livelihoods advisory Board/council in Namibia tasked to collect information on livelihoods? If it is there, is it based at the national or regional level?
Such platforms might be a good starting point in understanding possible solutions. This kind of platform should be very close to leaders at both levels, especially at the regional level where poverty alleviation and income generating projects are suppose to be implemented.
If the said projects are implemented in line with the full understanding of the livelihood based aspects. I strongly believe that it might minimise some results analogous to the one the writer refers to in the letter.
 Both market and the environment are changing; therefore the livelihoods will unquestionably change as well.
Education on basic livelihood alternatives should be encouraged to make sure that our communities continue to cope with the daily pressure.
Basic livelihood-based decisions should be promoted to make sure that basic livelihoods are taken as priorities.

Romanus Kavindame Kawana
Basic Livelihoods
Advisor
Via the website

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