Livelihood Activities and Skills in a Modern World

Livelihood can be defined as how one produces goods and services or earns an income to support himself or herself and one’s family members. It can be a form of employment, occupation, a side hustle, or some form of business that sustains one’s living.

Before the arrival of the white men to our shores in the late eighteen-hundreds, our forefathers did not go to school to learn to read and write and do math to survive in their world. They lived carefree lives. They made gardens, fished, hunted, collected fruits and nuts, and carried out other livelihood activities to sustain themselves.

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They learned the skills of language communication and counting as they grew up within their traditional societies. They did not have to go to school to learn these skills.

They learned these skills by practically doing them in the field, with a bit of theory and advice given to them by their superiors. But no examinations were given to them to test their proficiency in a particular livelihood skill. The only way they honed their skills in a particular livelihood activity was to continuously do it until they were proficient at it.

Today, we live in a white man’s world. Money is the ultimate medium of exchange for goods and services. Without money, one would not be able to have or have access to goods and services. One can be able to produce some goods and services, but for other goods and services that one has no skills to produce, one will have to buy them using money as a medium of exchange to have or have access to them.

We all go to school in this modern world to learn to read and write and learn how to do math. Without these fundamental skills, one would not be able to live a decent and fulfilling life.

Schools teach us to be scientists, engineers, lawyers, economists, accountants, metal fabricators, drivers, carpenters, welders, and so on. The school system teaches us to get good grades in these specialties so that we can secure employment in the private or public sector and make a living for ourselves and our families. The school system teaches one to be an employee or to work for someone else.

Neverth_eless, the school system does not teach one to be self-employed, to be an employer who will create jobs and employ other people, or to be an investor. These are skills that one will have to work out when one has left the school system. But for some, they never get to work out these livelihood skills.

Today, many Papua New Guineans are banking their hopes on finding employment in the formal sector to make a living. They assume that finding employment in the formal sector guarantees them a continuous stream of income that can buy goods and services they and their families need to live in this modern world.

However, formal employment is not a guaranteed means of survival because one is working for someone else, and one can be sacked if one does not perform or does something illegal. Formal employment is usually subject to adverse national and international issues like wars, the collapse of other economies around the world, and inflation, so one can lose his or her employment if there is a recession or shutdown of business. For most formal employment, there is an age limit, and when one reaches that limit, one will have to be made redundant.

Formal employment is not the only means of making a living. According to Robert Kiyosaki, American-Japanese millionaire, philanthropist, and best-selling author of the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad, there are four ways to make money: you can be an employee, you can be self-employed, you can start up a business and employ other people to work for you, and you can be an investor. One can also be a professional sportsman/woman like Michael Jordan (Basketball), David Beckham (Soccer), or Serena Williams (Tennis) and earn millions of dollars to live a life of financial freedom.

To be an employee, to start up a business and employ others, and to be an investor, one needs to have some form of specialist skill to do these things. One cannot be an employee unless one has some skill required by his or her employer. To start and run a business, one would need to have some expertise in the business one is going into so that the chances of failure are minimal. To be an investor, one would need to have some knowledge of the types of investments one is going to make so that the risks of losing one’s money due to bad investments are minimal.

To be self-employed is a livelihood activity that may require some specialist knowledge to start up or one may require little specialist knowledge to start up.

 To be self-employed does not require one to thread the mill 7 – 5 every day because one is his or her own boss. One can spend an hour or less every week to do some work or one can source out most of his or her work for other people to do while one does other things.

The self-employment sector has seen a boom in recent years due to advances in Information Technology (IT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Advances in these two technologies have created unprecedented opportunities that have seen an influx of self-employed individuals who are now known as creators. These creators are copywriters, ghostwriters, speech writers, and self-publishing book authors while others own blogs, newsletters, and YouTube video channels.

Self-employed individuals in the creator space are also into creating new technologies that solve problems in the real world, which they sell for millions of dollars to make a living. Some have used the new technologies they developed to create business ventures that create goods and services to address the problems they set out to solve.

The skills needed to be a creator are easy, and one can learn the skills of a trade quite easily using information created and sold on the web or in the form of books. Books, blogs, e-books, newsletters, and YouTube videos now make it so easy for individuals to become creators, and anyone can become a creator if one puts in the time and effort to learn a particular skill.

 Another area in which self-employment can play a major part in enhancing livelihoods is the small-scale farming sector. This sector embraces the fields of agriculture, horticulture, agroforestry, forestry, aquaponics, aquaculture, hydroponics, sericulture, permaculture and vermiculture. Just like creators, the skills needed for different small-scale farming activities are easy to learn through newsletters, e-books, books, blogs, and YouTube video channels.

Small-scale farming is an expansive field, and livelihood activities within agriculture, horticulture, forestry, agroforestry, aquaponics, aquaculture, hydroponics, sericulture, permaculture, and vermiculture need to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, my subsequent newsletter posts will address some of the different livelihood activities within the fields of agriculture, horticulture, forestry, aquaponics, aquaculture, hydroponics, sericulture, permaculture, and vermiculture.