CARE India focuses on building resilient livelihoods by supporting communities to adapt and prepare for the shocks and stresses of climate change that threaten their livelihoods and well-being. CARE India works closely with communities and strives to reduce disaster risks and enhance community resilience by understanding current and future risks, addressing underlying causes of climate change, empowering vulnerable communities and individuals, conducting systems analysis, multilevel- cross sectoral coordination and influencing relevant policies.

CARE India’s resilience framework integrates livelihoods, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation as well as mitigation approaches under a single assessment framework. This includes enhancing employability, leadership skills, and capacities; increasing awareness about public schemes and climate information; and improving access to markets and information. Second, by building assets, such as enabling women to own and manage community based microfinancing of productive assets such as machinery, livestock and land, and rehabilitating degraded natural resources. Third, by collectivization where women are encouraged to practice group-based savings to finance their livelihood and demand land and forest rights. This is followed by developing participatory value chains, a method that helps enhance women’s capacities to take up new and non-traditional roles in agricultural and forestry value chains. The fifth approach is to engage with men and other influential actors to sensitize them on the role of women and the issues they face in practicing resilient livelihoods. These approaches that cover both household and community in terms of helping build resilient livelihoods are integrated within nine of CARE India’s livelihood projects.