Sustainable livelihood livelihood is defined as the combination of all activities developed in relation to the resources that permit households to cover their needs in order to continue surviving and developing. Various elements at different levels interact within these systems: * The context of vulnerability may reflect geographical factors, climate, history, demographics, and the social and economic situation. This context defines the risks that the population faces. * The resources or assets to which the family or individuals have access, control or possess and with which they carry out productive processes, participate in the labour market or use for exchange with other families or individuals. These can be classified in the following manner: * Natural capital: made up of natural resources such as land, water and other biological resources. * Physical capital: includes the goods that have been created through productive processes, for example infrastructure (roads, bridges) and machinery. * Human capital: the ability to work and the labour capacity of a family unit or individual. * Financial capital: the household’s access to money, which may be through savings or credit. * Social capital: attitude towards reciprocity within the community, between households or individuals, based on the confidence formed through social links. * Policies, institutions and organisations influence the access to necessary livelihood resources and affect production processes by creating conditional factors such as laws or services.
It can be seen then, that these variables interact to shape how households or individuals carry out their livelihood strategies, which are simply the manner in which they develop their activities or obtain their means for living, their food or income, and thus, their capacity to satisfy their basic needs. This process determines the level of food security, economic security and basic living conditions of the family.

When facing an adverse situation or a crisis, populations use livelihood strategies adapted to dealing with risks, these are called livelihood or adaptation strategies. “A livelihood system is sustainable when it is capable of facing and recovering from tensions and convulsions, of maintaining or increasing its capacity and goods and offering opportunities for sustainable livelihoods for the next generation”.

Livelihood strategies are the range and combination of activities and choices that people make in order to achieve their livelihoods goals. Dependent on their resource base and their understanding of the options available, different categories of households develop and pursue different livelihood strategies. 1.1. Rationale and Justification of the baseline survey
The emergence of the HIV epidemic is one of the biggest public health challenges the world has ever seen in recent history. In the last three decades, HIV has spread rapidly and affected all sectors of society-young people and adults, men and women, and the rich and the poor. Sub Saharan Africa is the epicenter of the epidemic and continues to carry the full brunt of its health and socio-economic impact.

Ethiopia has made significant strides in health care delivery and mitigation of the impacts of HIV & AIDS. Service coverage has remarkably expanded with sharp increase in health care facilities and training and deployment of health extension workers. This demonstrates that with commitment, clear policies and innovative strategies success in improving healthcare is feasible in low and middle-income settings.

The sustained high-level commitment including the increase in allocation of national health budget has made significant improvements in basic healthcare. The number of health facilities and work force has steadily grown in the last two decades, increasing coverage and use of healthcare.

There were tremendous efforts made to standardize the service delivered to those under different forms of care and support including OVC support. Recently Ethiopia developed a service delivery guideline for the support of PLWHA and affected families including OVC. This guideline is expected to standardize the haphazard modes of implementing the care and support programs including the income generating activities to OVC and PLWHA.

Several studies were also made on the effectiveness of IGA in the country and there are differences in the findings in relation to its effectiveness. Most of the studies, however are post intervention and may not help for the IGA already implemented. Therefore, there is a need to undertake a prospective study to identify the types of IGA that are cost effective and the strategy to be used in implementing IGA.

On this justification and rationale, It is our conviction that the assigned consultants for this consultancy service will be in a better position to perform the assignment effectively due to the following five reasons. ( The effectivenees of IGA?)

First, E-DMBC is a growing Development, Management and Business Consulting Company in Ethiopia established by professional from Ethiopia and abroad who have consulting experience in multi-sectoral development projects and organizing research studies and managing program/project cycle. There are more than 20 associate consulting working with diversified expertise with suitable environment for the contract administration.

Second, E-DMBC has a strong experience on gender and HIV/AIDS analysis, policy development, mainstreaming guideline development, implementation of mainstreaming action plan and monitoring and evaluation of the mainstreaming interventions. Our experiences in the field of gender mainstreaming and training facilitation have been well commended due to its innovative methodologies, quality and originality, and completing the assignments by keeping deadlines in mind.

Third, the educational qualification, skill set and experiences are in line with the requirement to perform this assignment.

Fourth, the assigned consultants for this consultancy service have skillful art and science of training facilitation on gender issues as well as HIV/AIDS related issues. Moreover, they have the skill to develop gender and HIV/AIDS work place policy and mainstreaming guidelines. Besides, they have hands on experience in mentoring, coaching and managing capacity building interventions.

Fifth, the consultants are expired in the field of administering participatory training approaches and mentoring interventions in particular to gender issues. They are trained by national and international organizations. Furthermore, the assigned team members have worked with various local and international CSOs/NGOs in facilitating gender mainstreaming training and developing work place gender and HIV/AIDS policy development in different scales in different sectors.