Foundational Support: A Critical Enabler of a Living Income

At Palmera, our mission is to support vulnerable families to earn a living income—one that allows them not just to survive, but to live with dignity, stability, and choice.

Through our core entrepreneurship models, we’ve helped thousands of families strengthen and stabilise their incomes. In many cases, this is enough. But over time, we’ve come to understand that not all families begin from the same place.

Some face deep, structural exclusions: unsafe housing, no toilet, no clean water, or insecure land. These barriers don’t just make life harder—they absorb the income families work hard to earn. Without these basic protections, income gets swallowed up by crisis after crisis, keeping families stuck in survival mode rather than moving toward stability.

For others, their circumstances—disability, displacement, or chronic poverty—mean they’re unable to engage in higher-income work from the outset. They may need foundational support before they can truly participate in or benefit from economic programmes.

That’s where Foundational Support comes in.

These are not acts of charity, but targeted, strategic investments that remove the barriers holding families back from building lives of dignity and opportunity.

This may include:

• Safe and stable housing
• Water line connections
• Toilet construction
• Land documentation and advocacy

How It Connects to Our Core Work
Foundational Support operates both alongside and within our core economic programming. It enables some families to begin the Graduation pathway, and for others already in our programmes, it helps them sustain and build on their progress. It ensures that the income families earn can truly lift them—not just help them survive.