Project will identify the very poor and prioritise its actions focusing on them. The targeting strategy will not:
(i) Neglect groups that hover around the poverty line as the poverty dynamics is strong and preventing people from falling under poverty line is crucial in terms of reducing the below poverty line households over time;
(ii) Unduly disturb the social network that the people have maintained through time and thus allow for maintenance of the existing social capital ;
(iii) Create a bottleneck in using the entrepreneurial ability available in the rural society so that the micro-enterprises flourish creating jobs and reducing un- and under-employment.
Those groups will be targeted that hover just above and fall below the poverty line so as to allow for the prevention of resentment among the larger community whose co-operation will be needed if livelihoods are to take hold.
Within this broad framework targeting of the worse-off households would be achieved by:
(i) Selection of the blocks and villages that have relatively high incidence of poverty and higher ratio of the SC/ST population ;
(ii) Integrated assistance in using available natural resources more productively through appropriate small scale interventions in agriculture, livestock, horticulture, and water resources with affordable technologies; and
(iii) Focussing the demonstration only to the households below poverty line, thus creating models suitable for them and provide differential levels of assistance between the relatively worse-off and better-off.
Tools to be used by project to achieve this goal:
• PRA exercises for poverty mapping
• Identification of self-targeted activities and
• Intensive sensitisation programmes
Gender Strategy
Project would focus on:
• Introduction of indigenous as well as mechanised technologies that would improve efficiency and reduce the drudgery of women.
• Influence gender division of labour by sensitising men on relevant aspects of gender equity. This would be undertaken by the NGOs using the SHGs as platform.
• Taking commitments from the men to contribute their labour in income generating activities being provided to the participating households.
• Interventions such as in forestry, would bring the source of fodder and firewood closer and thus contribute to reduction of the work burden of women.
• While screening feasible enterprises by applying the Sub Sector Business Development Services process, a gender perspective would be introduced and mitigating strategies would be devised in cases where women are negatively affected.
 

Strategies for women empowerment :

The Project will attempt the following
(i) Women are well represented in various project management units, NGOs, and grassroots institutions;
(ii) Conduct series of intensive training on Gender Perspective building in the initial phase of the programme targeting all stakeholders (PMU, District project Management Committees, NGO and Institutional partners, government departments, identified communities and community leadership)
(iii) Build gender concerns into all economic and institutional capacity development aspects of the programme as well as in the livelihood training and capacity development programmes.
(iv) Acquire baseline data and information on gender specificity of the target area to facilitate development of a need-based strategy for mainstreaming gender. It will also act as a monitoring and evaluation tool for measuring project progress.
(v) Strengthen women’s participation through documenting their stories and experiences.
(vi) Develop gender sensitive auditing tools for measuring success as a part of the Monitoring and evaluation process.