Priorities

CLIMATE-sMART pRODUCTION, aCCESS tO nUTRITIOUS fOOD, aND sUSTAINABLE lIVELIHOODS aRE LIFT’S kEY fOCUSES

Under its current strategy, LIFT-funded projects are based on the core priorities of:

supporting food system actors to increase the production of nutritious food, including through climate-smart agriculture,
improving physical, social, and financial access to nutritious food, and
enabling people to start or improve enterprises or employment opportunities.

LIFT also supports approaches that increase the adoption of optimal nutritional and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices, reduce negative coping strategies, improve access to protection services, and enhance local capacities – where there is a clear link to core priorities outlined above.
Working in a complex operating environment, LIFT is safeguarding hard-won development gains against potential shocks through building resilience and response mechanisms.

CLIMATE-SMART PRODUCTION OF FOOD

LIFT plays a crucial role in supporting climate-smart production of nutritious foods. Programming focuses on interventions with Myanmar's farming, fishing, and forest-reliant communities that focus on the entire food system by:

facilitating access to climate-resilient inputs, including climate-adapted crops, livestock, and aquatic resources,
supporting integrated farming systems through the adoption of climate-resilient integrated crop-livestock-fish production systems,
promoting sustainable value chains, investments, and viable off-farm activities, and
strengthening community-led natural resource management through the sustainable use of natural resources, particularly efficient water and soil management, to support ecosystem services.

ACCESS TO NUTRITIOUS FOOD

Production of nutritious food is not enough to reduce vulnerability and drive equitable nutrition outcomes. LIFT is building resilient and accessible food systems by:

strengthening the physical access to nutritious food through working with smallholder farmers, improving market linkages, and fostering more resilient supply chains that can withstand shocks,
enhancing financial access by supporting sustainable livelihoods, income opportunities, and scalable social protection mechanisms that enable households to afford a diverse and nutritious diet, and
promoting social access by addressing, with dignity, barriers to obtaining nutritious food and engaging with diverse local actors to establish community groups to boost food production and livelihoods.

ENTERPRISES AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

LIFT is creating sustainable, positive enterprises and employment, while reducing negative coping strategies, by:

supporting income-generation activities, decent work, skills development and safe migration through introducing skills and entrepreneurship training, increasing awareness of safer migration, and promoting decent work standards and innovative solutions to employment barriers,
developing micro and small enterprises – especially led by women, youth and marginalised persons – through offering financial and technical assistance, market viability assessments, business plans, credit linkages, and strengthening business networks and value chains,
promoting economic inclusion that improves access to financial tools and services, supports village savings and loans groups, and provides financial literacy training, and
focusing on transversal skills to improve resilience and adaptability in an uncertain economic environment.

SHOCKS