LIFT Annual Report 2018 describes LIFT’s record-breaking year and its achievements, as the multi-donor fund and its partners reached out to more people through more projects than ever before in its 10-year history.
By the end of 2018, LIFT had worked in 69 per cent of Myanmar’s townships, reaching 11.6 million people. This represents a 23-per cent increase on the previous year. Thanks to LIFT and its partners’ work, six million people strengthened their resilience to shocks, and nearly 488,000 households improved their diets.
In 2018, LIFT managed 87 grants, worked with 60 partners and handled 77 projects. The number of implemented projects was high but they were also highly successful, with LIFT meeting or exceeding 26 out of 28 outcome indicators for which data was collected, including increased household incomes, asset ownership, income diversity, resilience, diet diversity, food provisioning and policy initiatives.
Some of LIFT’s most important work in 2018 included supporting nutrition for mothers and children in the first 1,000 days of life, increasing access to financial services in all geographic zones through microfinance institutions and customised loans for vulnerable people, improving women’s empowerment and contribution in decision-making, expanding social protection for the elderly and people with disabilities, accelerating farm mechanisation and stimulating rural non-farm business growth, adjusting the approach to programming in Rakhine following large displacements of people in 2017 and training thousands of migrants across Myanmar.
