While working with the Livelihoods Fund on large-scale projects including agroforestry, restoring mangrove plantations or rural energy, we were lucky enough to meet extraordinary actors on a daily basis, who each develop operational solutions in their countries and organizations.The very idea of creating the Livelihoods Network was born from these meetings and simple questions such as ‘how can we strengthen these projects overtime, can we evolve towards a larger scale and accelerate the innovation process by creating connections between protagonists, between scientific and in-the-field knowledge?’.
Livelihoods Network Camp 2012 – The Fruits of Hope
Nobody has the ULTIMATE solution to our planet’s complicated problems. But many people develop partial solutions and develop techniques whose environmental, economic and social impacts are already visible and measurable. These inventors, who are sparking new development means, work in NGOs but also in small companies, in research or technical institutions. They work in small local structures or big international institutions. They share a same state of mind, values and a specific attitude: solutions must be invented and implemented with and by the concerned populations; sustainable solutions are the ones which combine the creation of social, economic and environmental value; they have to be replicable or adaptable to a larger scale in order to have an impact.
The Livelihoods network is a platform dedicated to the exchange of economic and social innovations between actors from NGOs or big companies, social entrepreneurs, experts, all having taken action and sharing the same values. The network is open to all and observes very simple rules: when applying, you accept to give as much as you are going to receive, to exchange the know-hows and knowledge you have developed. By doing so, you connect to a whole network of people who might have the solution – or part of the solution – you are looking for and could be interested in building a co-solution together.
By making solution-finding easy and helping the diffusion of knowledge and competences, the Livelihoods Network enables both communities and business partners to initiate new activities, help the ones already created thrive and imagine new solutions to sell products.
If you can relate to the spirit of the Livelihoods Network, it is wide open. Come join us.
Bernard Giraud
President of the Livelihoods Venture
Board of Livelihoods Network
David Hogg (The Naandi Foundation, Inde), Peter Minang (ICRAF-World Agroforestry Center, Kenya), Rosa Maria Vidal (ProNatura Sur, Mexique), Habiba Ali (Sosai, Nigeria), Timm Tennigkeit (UNIQUE forestry and land use, Allemagne), Remi Hemerick (SOS Sahel, France), Antonio Araujo (FIBA, Mauritanie), Bambang Suprayogi (Yagasu, Indonesie), Ismaila Sall (Oceanium, Sénégal), Jean-Pierre Rennaud (Livelihoods Venture), Bernard Giraud (Livelihoods Venture).