Project for Rural Women's Economic Empowerment and Market Development in the Matale District, the Central Province of Sri Lanka. The Project seeks sustained improvement in the quality of life of the rural population by strengthening low-income rural markets, stimulating local economic development and diversifying livelihood opportunities, which can also contribute towards the national development goals of inclusive economic growth, and poverty alleviation.
It is well known that poverty is multi-faceted and that raising incomes and increasing assets alone are often not adequate to sustainably reduce poverty. It is therefore, important to leverage markets to improve the economic wellbeing of the very poor as an essential facet of graduating people out of poverty. But, CHRD's previous experience shows that the poor will engage in informal economic activities, because the barriers to entry are lower than in the formal sector. Although, labour and time
The Project seeks sustained improvement in the quality of life of the rural population by strengthening low-income rural markets, stimulating local economic development and diversifying livelihood opportunities, which can also contribute towards the national development goals of inclusive economic growth, and poverty alleviation. Rural economy faces multiple challenges to its growth, which range from the lack of access to financial resources, inadequate managerial and technical skills.
The proposed Project is informed by CHTD's rich experience of implementing economic and market development initiatives. It will benefit from the extensive geographic outreach and wide network of social capital organised by CHRD in the District. It will also build on the achievements and lessons of Livelihood Strengthening Programme to the extent possible, synergies will be fostered between work implemented by Livelihood Strengthening Programme and that proposed in the project.
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).
