About Us
UPENDO LIVELIHOODS is about reaching out to people. We listen to and learn from people living in poverty to identify and help them fulfill their own needs. We fight hunger and poverty to make lasting change in people’s lives. We use our knowledge and experience to expand people’s choices. We seek to end all forms of human poverty by going into the hard places and closely walking with the world’s most vulnerable people.
Our view of poverty is holistic and complex. Our solutions are innovative and community-specific. We courageously seek out the overlooked and advocate for the underserved. We’re unrelenting and we do what others claim can’t be done. We honor the people we serve by inviting them to contribute to the process. Through community-owned transformation we empower children, families and communities to invest in their own development. More than anything, we want to see people thrive. We are agents of change. We work, we feed, we teach, we love, but we know when it’s time to leave.
Mission
The mission of Upendo Livelihoods is to empower the disadvantaged and act as a catalyst, creating opportunities for people living in poverty. Upendo Livelihoods makes an impact through its holistic programming to break the cycle of poverty in the households and communities where we work. Poverty heavily impacts people’s ability to care for and feed their families. Whether through improved farming methods, educational opportunities for children, better health access, clean water, increased economic opportunity, or women’s empowerment, we strive to uplift communities.
Vision
The vision of Upendo Livelihoods is to be a global leader in transforming the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable people, especially women and girls, across the globe by creating long-lasting, positive, and community-led change. Upendo Livelihoods brings together a team of dynamic professionals who use their skills, knowledge, and experience, and leverage their networks to help eliminate hunger and reduce poverty.
Our strategic objectives
UPENDO has identified five key priorities on which it is best placed to intervene. These priorities, or Strategic Objectives, represent our main areas of work to achieve our vision of communities free from poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. UPENDO aims to use an integrated approach to enhance incomes, increase agricultural productivity, and contribute to improving the living standards of all.
Agriculture, food security and nutrition
Food security exists when all people at all times have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Our focus is on the four pillars of food security; availability, access, utilization, and stability.
The nutritional dimension is integral to the concept of food security.
water and irrigation
From 1990 to 2010, more than 2 billion people gained access to safe drinking water , but 748 million people are still without clean drinking water. UPENDO LIVELIHOODS provides water related equipment and services including well drilling , water pumps, and water filtering to help provide safe drinking water. The water is also used for food production (crops, livestock and fisheries), preparation, and processing
women empowerment
We know that to transform communities we must start with women, address the five domains of women empowerment: Production(Decisions about crop and livestock production), resources (access to and decision making power about productive resources and assets, such as land, agricultural inputs, or credit), income (control of irrigated outputs and expenditures), leadership (involvement in cooperatives, community based organizations, and other social or economic groups), and time(allocation of time to agriculture, income generating activities, and domestic tasks). Reducing labor burden for women through appropriate technology and other strategies will receive time allocated for some time-consuming purposes
education
Education is key in breaking intergenerational poverty. Girls who stay in school are healthier, earn more money as adults, start families later and are more likely to send their daughters and sons to school .But the cost of secondary school is prohibitive to many families. UPENDO LIVELIHOODS helps keep girls in school , an investment now for future generations
For every additional year of education for women of reproductive age, child mortality decreased by 9.5 per cent.
But the cost of secondary school is prohibitive to many families . UPENDO LIVELIHOODS provides school supplies school fees to vulnerable children, especially girls.
WHAT WE DO
About 783 million people live below the international poverty line of US$1.90 a day. Poverty is more than the lack of income and resources to ensure a sustainable livelihood. Its manifestations include hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and other basic services, social discrimination and exclusion as well as lack of participation in decision making. Most people living below the poverty line belong to two regions : Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
