'Dignified life - sustainable world'

The overall vision of LM International is that all human beings are unique and of equal value, and are entitled to live an empowered life and influence key life decisions. We believe that any change should be socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable, i.e., must meet current needs without compromising the living conditions for future generations. Priority should be given to the basic needs of affected people around the world.

Our mission is to save lives and empower people to achieve their full potential and strengthen the resilience of communities and societies during crisis and disaster situations.
 
Through its work, LM International realises sustainable healthcare for people and the planet while acknowledging human rights as well as emotional, spiritual, and physical needs.

EMERGENCY RELIEF, DEVELOPMENT AID AND PEACEBUILDING

In our work we follow the triple nexus approach in which humanitarian, development, and peace-building actors - each using their comparative advantage - pursue common collective outcomes through joint assessments, analysis, planning and programming. LM International has several such advantages. Our unique positioning, local presence and anchoring as well as the humanitarian expertise allow us to act fast and provide an effective response to the actual needs and demand. LM International is there before, during and after a disaster: our understanding of the context, actors, and the people on the ground facilitates an efficient design of humanitarian, emergency, or mobilisation response, with both right access and entry. We exhibit the resilience we preach – we remain on the ground when others don’t.

While our long-term collaborations with local partner organisations in ongoing development aid enables instant engagement in case of minor disasters, in the event of major calamities, LM International’s donors demand our involvement through conduct of special fundraising appeals. Our delivered services are always informed by humanitarian needs assessments.

With the increased number and extent of global crises and disasters, preventive work with identifying the causes of poverty and vulnerability is becoming increasingly important.  Our work with longer-term social change processes strengthens local resilience to possible future crises and disasters.

LM International is also an aspiring actor in the youth, peace, and security agenda. We think that social exclusion, relative deprivation, and frustration may in turn lead to youth radicalization and could all be addressed via youth economic empowerment programmes. The youth beneficiaries of LM International’s often become agents of peace.
 
LM International aims at providing quality aid in all its interventions and supports local and national partners to follow and implement the same principles. We also want to respond and be sensitive to ongoing changes in the respective contexts (which change from humanitarian to non-humanitarian).

LM International’s commitment


LM International streamlines its operations across humanitarian aid, development, and peacebuilding agenda in line with national SDG targets.
 
Our humanitarian actions are guided by the International Humanitarian Law, which includes both aid to, and protection of, the civilian population, as well as the fundamental principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. LM International is a signatory of the Code of Conduct of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The International Aid Services (IAS)-Sweden who in 2019 was incorporated into LM International was one of the founding members of the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) Alliance. LM International’s adherence to the CHS Alliance’s commitments to measure and improve the quality of our assistance is essential in upholding the necessary operational standards. We also adhere to other regulatory frameworks such as the SPHERE Project’s Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response. In our development projects we follow the Sustainable Development Goals and wider UN Agenda 2030. LM International is also part of the cluster coordination.

Rights-based approach

Aid must lead to legal and moral duty bearers at different levels of society taking responsibility, which is why LM International, and our partners work to create forms of dialogue as well as to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the duty bearers. In many of the countries where LM International operates, corruption is a threat to development. For this reason, we strive for openness and transparency at every level.
 
We work to ensure the targeted right holders are capable and empowered to claim their rights, hold the duty bearers accountable and address the root causes of inequality, exclusion and poverty.

How we operate

While LM International’s work involves a broad partnership of stakeholders from the private sector, international donors, organisations, innovators, academia and projects to national NGOs and civil society, we also believe that the government ownership and respective Ministries involvement is key.


We also support the civil society to define its own role in the community and believe in a unique role the religious leaders on the ground could play and be effective agents of change. LM International supports building local capacities of communities, local NGOs, and local authorities. 

 
We aspire to bridge between the local and regional contexts giving local actors a platform to inform wider programs and drive innovative change. We want to offer a collaborative space for innovative partnerships to accelerate the implementation of SDGs 1, 3, 4 and 6.

 

LM International is decentralised and in our practice, we use the adaptive management framework.

Monitoring and evaluation

In all our interventions we collect and analyse disaggregated data to inform our decision making, adapt our actions and inform our beneficiaries, stakeholders, and donors about our impact.

Theory of change

Our theory of change intends to fulfil the organisation's vision of a ‘Dignified life - sustainable world’ for all and realize our mission to save lives and empower people. We accomplished through work via four business areas which directly contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals:

  • Social and economic inclusion. SDG 1 - End poverty (1.2, 1.5)

  • Sustainable health. SDG 3 - Good health and well-being (3.1, 3.5, 3.8)

  • Water, sanitation and hygiene for all.  SDG 6 – Clean water and sanitation (6.1, 6.2, 6.b)

  • Equitable and quality education for all. SDG 4 – Quality education (4.5, 4.6) 

In all our aid efforts we are taking into consideration the below three key cross-cutting issues which additionally address other Sustainable Development Goals

  • Environment and climate. LM International works to ensure that all interventions will be sustainable in the long-term from an ecological perspective, i.e., minimizing the negative impacts on the environment and building preventive and adaptive measures to the increasing changes in the global and local climates. SDG 13 – Climate Action

  • Gender equality.All our interventions integrate solid gender analysis to identify and address the structural, cultural, and stereotypical norms and barriers undermining women and girls’ empowerment and threatening their safety and security. LM International also aims to be a driving force in realisation of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as well as elimination of all forms of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and support for resilient and integrated health care systems for all. SDG 5 - Gender Equality

  • Conflict sensitivity and protection. We work to reduce the risks for the most vulnerable individuals to be victims of violence and prevent conflicts within the communities we work with and within the society at large. SDG 16 – Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions 
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