Building confidence, creating livelihoods: Study of short term outcomes for apprenticeship and block grants recipients

A key strategy of UPPR for reducing poverty is creating opportunities for the poor and extreme poor to acquire skills for establishing a new liveli-hood. A job boosts household income while also contributing to the em-powerment of poor women and men, which, in turn, sparks further indi-vidual actions to overcome poverty. Urban livelihoods promotion enable poor communities to – improve their savings, afford nutritious food, edu-cate their children, pay for required health services and meet their shel-ter needs.UPPR has two key strategies for supporting the poor and extreme poor, especially women, to establish livelihoods. The apprenticeship grant pro-vides women and men with skills training to help them build confidence and provide them with the necessary experience to find work, often for the first time. Secondly, the block grant provides extreme poor women the funds to kick-start a small business with the guidance of a mentor.To learn more about the outcomes achieved by these livelihoods inter-ventions, UPPR’s Research, Evaluation and Learning Unit undertook a study of short-term outcomes for both the apprenticeship and block grants in 12 towns. This report will first introduce the approach UPPR has taken to support individuals in poor urban communities to access income generating activities. It will then present and analyse findings from the short-term outcome study undertaken in 2013, focusing in turn on the apprenticeship grant and then the block grant. Finally it will con-sider the study findings in light of UPPR’s new directions in supporting poor urban communities to access sustainable livelihoods through en-gagement with the private sector.