It is always a major concern of government to promote employment. This is usually done through livelihood projects.

This concern to enable people to earn by training them and, at times, providing capital to buy materials they can process and sell seems easy to do because it is common. Everybody agrees it must be done and that it produces results. Some have even cited that “it is better to teach a person how to fish than to give him fish”.

But is it as easy as it seems? It is not. There are many problems that arise when promoting livelihood.

The difficulty starts with the identification of the livelihood suited to specific persons. A lot of things can go wrong. Success does not come easy and automatically.

There could be an inadequate market for the service or product. For example, a training on meat processing could be good for a batch of twenty participants but not for a hundred since they would just compete and “kill” each other due to limited local market.

What seems important is a clear analysis of whether or not the goods to be produced by the trainees can be sold for a profit. It is not just a matter of knowing how to produce it.

This implies that care must be taken to ensure that the demand for the service or product will exist for a long period of time. Sustainability is essential in choosing the service or product.

The problems multiply as we go through the process – up to the sale and consumption of the product. For instance, the capital requirement could be underestimated or that part of it is diverted to another purpose. Also, the product could be rejected by consumers because it falls short of their expectations (e.g. the product does not taste as well as that of existing producers or that it has a short shelf-life).

This makes the task of livelihood promotion a complex one. It is certainly not all about the amount of money given to cooperatives. It is about the proper use of livelihood assistance in such a way that jobs are, indeed, created preferably through entrepreneurship and self-employment.

Business acumen is, of course, not learned overnight. But that is what livelihood assistance pertains to – making businessmen out of those who receive it.

If it is the government that is providing the training or credit assistance then it must make every peso spent result in sustained employment.