Key terms
- Livelihood
- refers to all activities, entitlements and assets by which people make a living. Livelihoods are the means by which human beings make a living and satisfy their daily needs.
- The term sustainable livelihoods
- refers to the capacity of persons to generate and maintain a living and enhance their own well-being and that of future generations. A livelihood is sustainable when it is market-based, can cope with and recover from shocks and economic stress, and can maintain its capabilities and assets without undermining the natural environment.
- The terms cash-based transfer and cash-based intervention
- are used interchangeably to refer to programmes that provide cash or vouchers to beneficiaries to enable them to purchase goods or services directly. In humanitarian contexts, they refer to cash or vouchers given to individuals, households or community recipients; they do not include allocations to governments or other State actors.
- In-kind assistance
- is the direct provision of goods (food) or services to beneficiaries of assistance. In-kind assistance remains an important solution in crisis situations.
- Coping strategies
- are actions to which people resort when times are hard. They enable people to continue to meet their basic needs during a crisis. They may be reversible (for example, short-term reductions in food consumed, use of savings), or negative and harder to reverse (for example, sale of productive assets, resort to degrading or criminal activities).