By its projects Sparrow wants to provide people with practical and structural help to escape from poverty, making them independent and improving their standard of living. Sparrow’s understanding of poverty is:
- a lack of sufficient food, income and other goods to maintain an adequate standard of living or to reach this standard;
- being vulnerable to ‘shocks’ in your living environment and not being able to cope with it or to recover from it;
- not being able to obtain certain goods or means because of a weak position.
To Sparrow fighting poverty not only means improving the poverty situation, but also prohibiting the situation to get worse and making the present situation more bearable. In order to fight poverty Sparrow focuses on three topics:
- empowerment: access to and control of local means, public services, participation in local policy making, etcetera;
- security: reducing the vulnerability in the living environment of the poor and improving the capability to cope with ‘shocks’;
- opportunity: access to income generating activities, education, health care and other factors which directly influence people’s well being.
In planning measures to fight poverty it is important to consider all relevant factors of people’s daily life. Therefore Sparrow creates projects in consultation with the target people group and aims to cooperate with local authorities and organizations as much as possible.