II) Project approach: Human Development

When "The Resourceful Child" assumes the Human Development approach, it centers its proposal of change in the youngest children, their freedom and their capacities. In that sense, the project purpose is to promote children’s potentialities from before they are born in order to make possible that they enjoy a more prolonged and healthy life.

According to this approach, the development of the youngest children is not expressed exclusively in the economic growth of the families, in which they have grown. This is a mean and not the aim of the development. The aim of the early childhood development is related to the existence of opportunities, so that children are able to extend their range of options, use and develop their capacities choosing the life that they value the most. In this way, we assume a vision of human progress that exceeds or is beyond the strictly material approach. In addition, we provide ourselves with indicators that evaluate this progress starting from the liberties and capacities that people have to face their future autonomously, instead of the deficiencies inherited from their past.

From this perspective we believe in a free and sustainable human development of the children, which contributes to overcome their poverty situation, satisfy their necessities, respect the rights that protect them, the culture that gives sense to their life and actions, as well as the promotion of sustainability along their development process.

• Productivity: The project is concentrated in making possible that the youngest children, since they are born, expand their human potential through the development of the "infantile resourcefulness". So they build up progressively human capital that facilitates to them, when they become adults, a fully participation in the process of income generation and remunerated employment.

• Equity: Our proposal promotes that the youngest children have access to equal opportunities. In this sense, it is necessary to eliminate all barriers that interrupt the opportunities for an optimal and integral early development. So that children are able to enjoy such opportunities and benefit from them developing their potential in a free and responsible way.

• Sustainability: We are conscious of the necessity to guarantee access to opportunities, not only for the present generation of children, but also for the future ones. Therefore we must restore all forms of capital: human, physical, environmental that participate and are used in the intervention, in order to take advantage of them to benefit children, who are about to be born at the end of the project.

• Participation: We think the young child must participate in his/her own development with the huge potential he/she brings since they are born, which allows him/her developing his/her capacities and transform his/her surroundings creatively from very early. The infantile development must also be carried out by children and not only for them. Young children have the right to fully participate in the processes that are part of their lives.