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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 27 October 1999 Issue No. 452 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 21 - 27 October 1999 Issue No. 452
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Is livelihood survival?
By Mariz TadrosMany participants at last week's two-day conference on Adolescent Livelihoods (organised by the Population Council and the International Centre for Research on Women) would have agreed that the most colourful aspect of the whole event was the multicoloured bag handed out, which contained the conference papers. The bags, made out of recycled cloth by the adolescent girls living in the garbage collectors' (zabbalin) community in Muqattam, seem to sum up all the benefits of community development. The project in which the girls work is not run by the government but by an NGO: the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE). It seeks to empower adolescent girls by imparting life skills and providing access to income-generating opportunities through the exploitation of existing resources in the community -- in this case, by recycling material from waste. Finally, the project is very much market-driven.
Informal education, informal training and entrepreneurial activities are the basic tools of empowerment advocated by the livelihood approach. Its supporters would argue that the zabbalin project is a perfect example of how a community can help itself, and create exciting new income generating opportunities for its most vulnerable group: adolescent girls.
But perhaps the experience of adolescent girls in the Muqattam project also sheds light on this approach's shortcomings. The APE's work among the zabbalin is extremely popular internationally because it is unique in Egypt. Its culturally specific nature makes it an initiative that is very difficult to replicate around the country. How many adolescents can it realistically assist among the millions unemployed in this country? Despite the livelihood approach's emphasis on recognising the important role of the market, furthermore, the garbage collectors' products, notes Marie Assaad, one of the project's founders, cannot compete internationally. The marketing itself is not the adolescent girls' responsibility. Also, while the livelihood approach talks about the great potential for imparting skills, there is only so much its recipients can do with these skills if there is mass unemployment. NGOs like the APE can only create a certain number of income-generating opportunities; they certainly cannot create jobs. As for the idea that the pursuit of a livelihood approach will lead from survival to security to growth -- well, despite the intensive efforts invested, none of the girls have made the leap from being paid employees to starting up their own businesses.
Of course, the overwhelming odds stacked against adolescent girls from low-income groups cannot be overstated: apart from the vulnerability that comes with their class, gender, and age combined, there is an array of cultural constraints. For example, girls of this age are invisible in many communities, as parents, seeking to protect and prepare them for their future roles as wives and mothers, keep them at home. Other adolescent girls are forced to work for a living, however; and, being under the legal age of 18, they are driven into informal work that is often intensely exploitative (prostitution and domestic service, to mention but two examples).
Barbara Ibrahim, head of the Population Council's regional Office for West Asia and North Africa, suggests that the livelihood approach is particularly suitable for addressing some of these issues. "It attempts to go beyond efforts at eliminating child labour, and looks into the possibilities of offering programmes that expand their livelihood choices. Changing education systems and labour laws takes time and, while we go through this process, there are girls who never went to school or had a formal job. We are already falling behind in job creation for young men, let alone young women."
Ibrahim attributes the enthusiasm for the livelihood approach to a general loss of faith "in the centralised, top-down approaches. Egypt has already been experimenting with informal education by offering girls an opportunity to learn important life skills."
Some participants at the conference suggested that informal education could be a sound option for girls who were too poor to go to formal schools, or could not attend because they have to work, or simply because the returns of education in the labour market were not very high. It was suggested that formal and informal education should be placed on equal footing, since informal education imparts life skills and survival strategies that have great importance in the lives of young women. Other participants wondered why Egypt's educational system seems to repel adolescent girls, although they do want to attend school.
'Small is not always beautiful': Will imparting life skills to adolescents prepare them for an escape from poverty, or deprive them of an all-important academic education?
photo: Sherif Sonbol
Simel Esim, from the International Centre for Research on Women, suggested that perhaps we should be examining ways to help adolescents combine earning with learning. "Alternative [informal] schooling could be offered; flexible working hours and school arrangements could make it more manageable for adolescents." This comment sparked a debate over whether young women should be at school or making a living at this stage of their lives.
One African participant said his own experience of working while still at school was quite positive and instilled in him a sense of responsibility. The idea that adolescents under the age of 18 should not be working is Eurocentric, he asserted.
Another participant, however, argued that adolescence is a period of learning, not of entering the work force. Some highlighted the particular dilemma that adolescent girls face: being at school does not relieve them of their responsibilities at home. Others pointed out that many adolescent girls have to work to be able to pay for their education.
In an overview of adolescent girls' access to existing micro-finance institutions, Victor Gomes of the Christian Commission for Development in Bangladesh pointed out that the Grameen Bank has started a new initiative providing credit to the daughters of female clients for the purpose of education. The three- to five-year loans are made at an interest rate of 20 per cent. One participant objected to the idea that adolescents should be getting an education on interest, especially under such conditions: "At rates like 20 per cent, it is not terribly good to borrow for an education."
Gomes described the many impediments to adolescents' access to credit: the minimum age of 18 and the fact that many are unmarried do tend to act as obstacles. Unmarried women have a propensity to migrate, according to one credit extension officer -- one reason why credit institutions are more reluctant to lend them money. The social stigma associated with an extension officer talking to an unmarried adolescent girl was also mentioned, as was the "unreliability" of unmarried adolescent girls. Other participants spoke of limited decision-making power, and the fact that male family members often impose choices on adolescent girls.
The legality of lending to adolescents was also questioned, since child labour policies set the minimum working age at 18. Although Gomes discussed this point as an impediment to adolescents' access to credit, some participants viewed it as an ethically sound protective measure.
Gomes dismissed concerns that making a livelihood on debt would impose unbearable psychological burdens on young women, arguing that, given widespread unemployment and poverty, any income-generating opportunity is welcomed. From the first day of the conference, however, there seemed to be an overall consensus that micro-credit programmes are not the panacea for poverty and unemployment, as many have suggested. One African participant pointed out that micro-credit schemes imposed from outside have had a devastating impact on people's lives. The absence of markets, market saturation, increased indebtedness among the poor, and the tendency of micro-credit programmes to trap women in traditional activities that do nothing to empower them were just a few of the reservations expressed.
John Grierson, a specialist in enterprise development, did not mince his words when speaking of the limitations of training in self-employment. To begin with, it is not suitable for every adolescent girl and boy: "The idea that everyone can be a happy entrepreneur is simply a myth. It is no particular service to add business failure to someone's existing array of problems," he pointed out. Minimalist training is what works best, according to Grierson, who explained that the idea is to give adolescents just what they need to become self-sufficient, by concentrating on providing just one service or specialty to the largest number of clients. "Effective training for enterprises often must be tailored to respond to a modest physical and financial scale, low levels of technology and profitability, an uncertain legal status, social and cultural barriers to market entry and participation and the broad range of skill needs that are typical of the informal sector," he explained, suggesting that programmes focusing on the acquisition of skills must follow the market closely. Many objected, however, that micro-credit and enterprise training schemes frequently place adolescents in informal sector activities with limited potential for growth.
In response to concerns that the livelihood approach is of limited use in alleviating poverty among adolescents, Esim nodded: "Yes, I admit it has to do with class, and it has to do with equity, but in light of the current circumstances, can they realistically go beyond that? We are trying to make the most of what [adolescents] have."
The conference's focus was community development programmes, so virtually no mention was made of policies or advocacy. One advantage of the livelihood approach, however, is that it is non-threatening and docile. In practice, livelihood programmes do not generally challenge government policies ("in the developing world, if you do incorporate advocacy in the agenda, it could kill your programme," as one participant put it bluntly). Nor do livelihood advocates challenge IMF prescriptions for decentralised, market-driven development. As for the traditional patriarchal beliefs that keep adolescent girls at the bottom of the pile, there is little prospect of rocking many boats.
Jayasankar Krishnamurty of the International Labour Organisation was sceptical about the true potential of the sustainable livelihood approach, especially in the developing world. He questioned the grounds on which many of the arguments in favour of the livelihood approach are based, and argued that its advocates lack sensitivity to the lifestyles of the poor. Krishnamurty also questioned the approach's sustainability and potential for growth. Sadly, he argued, this approach may be relevant only in the context of a small, very settled community; the interventions suggested are very local in scope, and their impact on the poor is highly overstated. "If you look at the developing world, people are moving all the time, sometimes because of conflict and natural disasters. Those who seek economic opportunities outside their immediate local environment just don't fit into [the sustainable livelihood] model," he added. The fact that micro-finance institutions in Bangladesh avoid extending credit to adolescents because they are highly mobile indeed seems to illustrate this point.
Krishnamurty also suggested that, regardless of the grassroots nature of the livelihood approach, its capacity to reach large numbers of people is severely limited. Barbara Ibrahim felt there is potential for turning micro-projects into macro-ventures, but only if more funding is put into replicating pilot projects and greater coordination among NGOs is achieved -- not to mention a change in government policies "allowing for the institutionalisation of credit provision on a profit basis without having to register as a bank". Ibrahim also believes that more efforts should be made "to turn a goat-raising project into a thriving business".
Krishnamurty, however, argues that the intervention strategies that characterise the livelihood approach simply do not stand much of a chance of helping large numbers of people.
"The idea that there are plenty of income-generating opportunities in a community is void. You can create a thousand little projects, but after that, you face the problem of market saturation... and there are only so many types of little projects you can set up. These are really piecemeal strategies that do not deal with the whole picture."
Self-employed adolescents will have to contend not only with market forces, but with the dynamics of globalisation itself, he added. "Small is not really very beautiful. The prospects for growth for these enterprises are very limited. For example, with respect to garment-based enterprises in Bangladesh, what is going to happen to them in 2003, when India and China flood the world with their goods?"
To help adolescents, he suggested, we need to concentrate on equipping them with "flexible, portable" skills allowing them to survive in a global economy when the market's demands change. This necessitates an emphasis on education and human investment, according to Krishnamurty. "We need to put adolescents back in education. Some of the greatest windows of opportunity are possible only through education," he said categorically.
Although the livelihood approach is not anti-education, he believes that "it traps people in schemes that will keep them where they are. What are the long-term prospects for these adolescents? They have few opportunities to advance. Five years from now, will these livelihood schemes survive and prosper? That is the real question."
