Income-Generating Activities - Action Against Hunger

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ings are good indicators of improvement in the food security of the family
unit.
— Social capital: strengthening of the networks of solidarity, creation of relationships
of trust between individuals, etc.
— Human capital: new knowledge acquired, etc.
— Natural capital: improvements in the use, conservation of natural resources
or in the access to and control over them.
— Physical capital: improvement in the productive assets in terms of access,
quality and quantity.
The use and combination of these new resources will permit the strengthening of
livelihood strategies and lead to an increased capacity to meet family needs through
new incomes. This can be compared with the price of the basic needs basket (a measure
of the cost of living) in order to evaluate the impact in terms of economic capacity
of the families.
• Impact on IGA:
— Increase and improvement of productive capital of the activity
— Improvement of the labour force available for the activities
— More efficient and sustainable production processes
— More transparent management
— Better access to credit
— Better access to the market, as suppliers and/or consumers of productive
inputs
Sustainability is another fundamental aspect that must be analyzed when evaluating
programmes that promote IGA. When analyzing the income generated, it is necessary
to investigate the division or sharing of this income and to check if part is
reinvested by the beneficiaries to use for operational costs, if they are recovering the
costs of their productive assets to avoid that they become obsolete and the activity
stops functioning (see Appendix 23 for a brief study regarding financial sustainability
of IGA).
Example 29: Example of profitability of agricultural IGA in Azerbaijan
The graph represents the income generated by the agricultural activities of 25
of the 52 groups supported by ACF in Beylagan and Adjabedi, in comparison with the
investment made by the programme and by the beneficiaries.
All of these IGA produced incomes higher than the investments made and all
were considered profitable. However, the profits were not similar in volume. Some
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INCOME GENERATING ACTIVITIES: A KEY CONCEPT IN SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURTIY