The DSWD Sustainable Livelihood Program is a strategy to spread prosperity among communities in the Philippines. We encourage Listahanan-identified poor families, especially Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program members, to engage in resource-based and market-driven community micro-enterprises, or explore employment opportunities.

Each participant is given the opportunity to choose between the Micro-enterprise Development track or the Employment Facilitation track. We facilitate assistance to participants from organizing them into groups, until planning and monitoring their livelihood projects to ensure that they are self-sustaining. We also partner with the public and private sectors as service providers and subject-matter experts on financial literacy, resource mapping, market scanning, and technical and vocational skills training, financial literacy and credit assistance, and employment opportunities among others.

Participants in the Micro-enterprise Development track are encouraged to pool their resources together as groups known as Self-employment Assistance-Kaunlaran Associations (SKA). These will help them establish economically viable enterprises and maximize resources within their organized groups.

Attaining self-sustaining micro-enterprises and gainful employment enhances their mobility to access to basic social services to improve their standard of living. They become economically fit to invest in health and education, and other basic needs. Along with other human development and poverty reduction programs, we aim to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty.