The Livelihood Tool-kit Program targets IDPs, returnees, and affected host community members. In compliance with specific criteria, the Program aims to promote their self-reliance and facilitate their return to the labor market by improving access to a range of professional work tools. It assists skilled IDPs who had lost their key productive assets (especially basic work tools) to resume work, by way of a professional trade or other enterprise, in order to generate an income sufficient to meet their basic needs.
What is a livelihood tool-kit?
This is a basic set of equipment and/or tools considered indispensable for a worker’s practice of a particular trade or profession. Each piece of equipment and/or tool is designed to be carried and used manually. For example: carpenter’s toolkit, electrician’s toolkit, painting tools and equipment, sewing kit and machine, men’s shaving and haircutting toolkit, etc.
Livelihood Toolkits Program 2018
In order to meet the challenges faced by people who lost their occupations during the crisis, the Syrian Society for Social Development (SSSD), in cooperation with the UNHCR, activated the Livelihood Toolkits Program. The Program focuses on empowering professionals by providing them with new tools to help them reenter the professional labor market and generate enough income to meet their basic needs. The most vulnerable have been targeted through clear mechanisms by which the Program operates.
The livelihood toolkits offered by SSSD covered the following occupations: sewing, mobile phone and computer maintenance, smithery, plumbing, carpentry, electrical installations and repairs and wall painting. In 2018, 2,407 professional toolkits were distributed in the following governorates: Damascus and Rural Damascus, Sweida, Hama, Tartous, Homs and Hasakeh.