One of the best experiences in my life has been working on the livelihood project. This has given a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. The team work is worth mentioning as it has made significant contribution in the overall success of the project and made the journey a joyful one …

Here I am sharing with you a truly wonderful experience

The Livelihood School is an academic institution promoted by BASIX group, a modern livelihood promotion institution. The objective of this education program was to build perspective and skill relevant for effective livelihood promotion. There are various idealistic, utilitarian and plain self-interest based arguments ranging from providing equal opportunity, to promoting economic growth, to ensuring social and political stability for promoting livelihood.

These learning institutions are not very different from those that exist in conventional educational settings. They are, however, different in the way they emerge, and cultivate themselves. Many of these learning environments are the result of a team effort, which bridges a wide range of expertise including subject matter experts, web developers, graphic artists, and instructional designers to produce one or more courses. Not always the most successful approach, the team approach has been widely used especially by distance education institutions.

It is now widely accepted today that promotion of large number of livelihoods, especially for the rural poor and women has emerged as the most significant development challenge of the century. The Livelihood School was set up to address this need. The School is involved in knowledge building, in areas relevant, for supporting large number of livelihoods and disseminating the knowledge to enhance implementation capabilities of individuals and organizations affecting the livelihoods of the poor. This task of promoting livelihoods ideally is that a livelihood should keep a person meaningfully occupied in a sustainable manner with dignity.

The Case Study

Livelihood promotion is very complex. However, many development organizations have attempted to extend a wide variety of services; there are few, which have attempted to address it in its full range. The Livelihood School is an academic institution promoted by BASIX group, a modern livelihood promotion institution. The objective of this education program is to build perspective and skill relevant for effective livelihood promotion. It is now widely accepted today that promotion of large number of livelihoods, especially for the rural poor and women has emerged as the most significant development challenge of the century.

The mandate of the school is to build up a scientific knowledge base on livelihoods & disseminate the same to livelihood practitioners for enhancing their understanding and implementation capabilities, who in turn will promote large number of livelihoods. The solution should address the livelihood challenges of millions of people & focus on livelihood promotion education and build the knowledge base of livelihood promotion. All economic activities are bound by some institutional context.

The challenge was to encourage the participants expected to help them – Acquire a broad perspective on different models of livelihood promotion. Aid them in understanding the process of livelihood support adopted by different intervention agencies. Finally, get them to appreciate that livelihoods can be promoted or supported in many different ways and that there is no one way of going about promoting livelihoods.

An Intervening Agency has to chart the path of promoting livelihoods and needs a framework for analyzing livelihood intervention choices in understanding the process with the choices offered. The livelihood school approached us to provide a framework for analyzing various design elements of a livelihood intervention and also lay out the choices available to an intervention agency on design parameters.

Solution

Our team @ ii closely worked with The Livelihood School to develop a comprehensive training solution. We have developed a courseware that utilizes full audio narration, animations, high-quality graphics, advanced simulations and tests to deliver a comprehensive and interactive training solution. This e-Learning course will lead to more effective & consistent learning and knowledge transfer through out the learning sessions at the livelihood school. We have raised some assessments towards the end of each topic/section, which might help bring out key issues that may arise from making some choices (right & wrong).

This module on Promoting Livelihoods introduced a variety of livelihood intervention models and strategies/approaches in promoting or supporting livelihoods. An understanding of these strategies and models helped draw on experiences of livelihood promotion in India and open our minds to the different choices. This module also covered twelve cases describing the livelihood intervention efforts of different agencies including Non-Government development organizations, state and private/corporate organizations. Being self paced or learner centric, the learner will be able to learn on his/her own pace, this will enable 100% learning. This course incepts motivation that helps the learner to drive towards the concepts with more urge and enthusiasm.

The course is targeted to entice anyone and everyone be a Doctor, Engineer, Government official, Volunteer, Banker, etc. – all whom have direct or indirect exposure to Livelihood. We need to understand that there could be different objectives of a livelihood intervention. As most livelihood interventions evolve around some economic activities, there is also an element of design of the livelihood activity. This course was designed to make learner understand and feel that they are a part of creating livelihoods and the course has been distributed into three modules: The first module describes what livelihoods are; the second module addresses how Livelihoods can be promoted, and the third module explains the framework for analyzing livelihood intervention choices.

The Impact

This course proposed clarity to a ambiguous training framework that helped think analytically and systematically about the choices and help design a livelihood strategy. It helped understand the essential right of all human being to equal opportunity (further educating that livelihood promotion is not only based on the principles of economic growth, but also on equity and human rights).

• Noticeable increase in the Training volume
  • More Revenue & More Reach Effect
  • e-Learning was used as a standalone training
  • e-Learning was used as a supplement to the classroom training
• Faculty could focus more on R&D
  • Qualitative improvement in curriculum
• Consistency of Training
  • Maintained across the geographies
  • This strategy helped cut down on any incurred costs

Most of the course participants are now producing interactive training volume. Preliminary feedback from the faculty and target audience suggests that they enjoy using the e-Learning course and find it extremely helpful. While this case study is based on enhancing livelihoods we suggest that if other countries have similar attitudes and experiences of e-Learning, the Flash based approach solution may well work elsewhere where livelihood institutions have similar requirements. We strongly believe that, the ease of use on self-learning does not guarantee that effective or engaging content will be created or that the students will appreciate it. Only the appreciation and commitment to best practices can do that.

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