Some more musings..

The amount that some rural communities rely on the forest is amazing – one village we went in to managed to list 27 Non-Timber Forest Products (anything they collect that isn’t timber). Whilst working in environmental microfinance projects we often describe the forest as a natural bank that people rely on in times of need (chopping down a tree because your daughter is ill and you need to pay hospital fees as an example) however it would be equally as fitting to call it the local shop (Co-op or Spa or even a Londis if you will). These products have a vast array of uses and not least importantly as a nutritious addition to all that rice! However there is more opportunity in the forest than is currently being utilised...

Micro-enterprise:

So a part of my job here is supposed to be to help my organisation facilitate a bit of micro-enterprise in these communities. Entrepeneurship is something that I find very interesting and trying to encourage this in an environmentally responsible way is a challenge – there is not the same entrepreneurial spirit here as in some countries. (I have just started reading a great book called The White Tiger that also talks about Entrepeneurship in India – a fiction but so far it’s very good).

One of my colleagues told me a story that they were discussing with one group of villagers how time consuming producing rice noodles is and how after they have been made you make even less money than if you had sold this as rice. When they looked at this closer and saw it to be true the response was – “but then no one would have rice noodles so we must continue”. I like fresh rice noodles so who am I to complain? This attitude is difficult when explaing a market based approach to development, lol.

Staff and CF members quiz a stallholder in our recent Market Study

Recently we took some of our staff and representatives from our CF communities on a Market Study. This meant travelling to different market centres around OMC and neighbouring areas – seeing the price of different products and what was available. We concentrated on the value of processing as most of our CF members are selling raw materials. The Market Study also helped us to complete Value Chains for important NTFPs so that a more in-depth feasibility study can be conducted with CF members later.

The trip went really well and everyone seemed to be brimming with business ideas and with a sense that things would be possible. There are hurdles to overcome when doing this however and a lack of processing skills and the remoteness of the communities are not insignificant.

We will be giving basic business training over the coming months and we are getting the CFs to identify how they would like to move forward and we may be able to offer small grants for training etc. We have identified some key areas that we work in where with training communities will be able to access markets and have the right NTFPs available within their forest areas. The next steps should be very interesting – the important thing from a “capacity building” point of view is not only the technical skills of how to undertake these processes and give business training (yep I am going to be responsible for that!) but also understanding the importance of proper research the team has seen how some of our initial ideas just wont work in some places. I hope this will lead to improved best practice in the future – not just undertaking activities because the donor wanted some “livelihood activities” etc. Anyway I have rambled on long enough – in my next blog I will talk about our clean Samrong action day that was a great success but leaves us with some more work to do...