The Vulnerability Context
The framework focuses on understanding the context that creates and perpetuates people’s vulnerability to poverty, in order to support more active, strategic interventions by community-based organizations. It explores the context at two levels: 1) that of the individual and her or his circumstances; and 2) that of the broader institutions and systems that affect the options that are open to marginalized people. It acknowledges that while people can and do make choices that deplete assets and make their lives less stable, there are powerful external systems and forces that combine to keep them in a long-term cycle of social and economic exclusion.