7. RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS FOR THE SUPPORT OF LDED

7.1 General Recommendations for LDED

· Whose initiative? People-centered or top-down?

There is a danger in imposing activities from outside as this often prevents the fostering of local ownership. In Nepal and Zambia, where local groups had themselves identified the IGAs, there was a strong sense of ownership. Thus, participatory planning processes are key as they allow the community to develop LDED activities.

· Maintain flexibility in targeting, and specifically target marginalized communities

Even the poorest and most marginalized groups can benefit from LDED activities, as demonstrated in Nepal and Zambia. Poverty should not restrict people’s participation in such activities, nor should their status as ethnic minorities.

· Include LDED aspects in PRAs, and review PRA tools for LDED dimensions

This may require the refinement of existing PRA methods, and facilitators may need further training in LDED-related processes and opportunities. Central to the emergence of new these activities are innovation, experimentation and flexibility.

· Build on Precedent

WIN’s partnership with existing projects meant that their experiences informed the development of WIN activities. In Nepal, for example, the experience of WIN’s partners in LDED processes increased the adoption of income generating activities and related technologies. The problems experienced by WIN partners in Cambodia (SPFS), Zambia (SIWIP) and Nepal (OFWM) taught valuable lessons on what not to do, such as rigidly following a specific methodology (e.g. SISTAPE) without adapting it to local needs, as this can lead to a loss of interest on the part of participants.

· Ensure adequate resources for LDED-oriented PRAs

PRAs are essential for assessing which LDED activities may be appropriate for a particular community. WIN-Cambodia shows us that a properly conducted PRA is vital for establishing the baseline data for measuring change, assessing needs and priorities, and building consensus on next steps. Economizing on PRAs results in the loss or misinterpretation of key data needed for decision-making and M&E.

· The capacity of the project team and local stakeholders to participate in PRA processes must be assessed, and, if necessary, that capacity strengthened. Existing information and data must also be reviewed. However, secondary data cannot replace the data to be gained from carrying out a PRA with the community.

· Use feasibility assessments when appropriate

Local agencies and NGOs already working in LDED initiatives can help in assessing the feasibility of activities. When appropriate, feasibility studies should be organized through local research institutes and NGOs with prior experience.

· Conduct training needs assessments where appropriate

A training needs assessment should be considered wherever major training activities are to be organized in an LDED-oriented project. It should include participants, extensionists and other support staff, and assess the information needs at each level as appropriate.

· Identify national and local expertise in LDED

When local communities have identified IGAs, it is advisable to uncover and collaborate with local expertise in that particular area. At least one national team member should be capable of assessing feasibility and markets, as well as of providing training to district teams and local stakeholders.

· An inventory of LDED expertise (national and international agencies, consultants, chambers of commerce, national universities and research institutes, entrepreneurs, etc.) should be done at the regional and national levels, to identify resources that might be tapped to support various initiatives.

· Document successful initiatives

Successful cases should be documented to capture promising and best practices.

· Review available LDED materials and curricula:

WIN’s experience showed that WIN teams in three countries generally lacked access to LDED-oriented training materials and practical "how-to" extension curricula. An inventory should be made of relevant materials and made available to national and district staff. These should be assessed as to which materials could be usefully translated into local languages. Experienced field staff could be contracted to prepare practical "how-to" handbooks on group organization and training.

· Ensure that adequate resources are available for monitoring:

Greater budgetary resources need to be allocated for monitoring. Monitoring data should include relevant price, output, costing and other economic information to assess the profitability of the initiative. Furthermore, local level capacity to undertake M&E should be built. Log frame approaches to evaluation should be avoided because they may be insensitive to the emergence of grassroots actions.

· Design projects for the long term to maximize sustainable outcomes:

There can be pressure to show positive outputs and economic impacts early in the project cycle when the realities in the field are less than ideal. Strongly participatory projects take time to show results, especially if a pilot project is to develop and test new methods. Most small enterprises need a multiple-year timeframe to gain experience and show a profit. Donors and project planners should avoid ambitious estimates of outputs and indicators in project documents, and design flexible LDED project timeframes of at least four years.

7.2 Recommendations for FAO

FAO should articulate a clear vision for planning and implementing LDED initiatives, as an integral part of its sustainable livelihoods programmes and projects. A comprehensive and inclusive dialogue on a vision of livelihoods diversification and enterprise development needs to be undertaken by FAO and its partners. Perhaps, a regional LDED discussion forum could be organized through WIN-Zambia’s steering committee members with broad participation from governments, NGOs, local groups and associations, with a similar event in Nepal involving FAO, GTZ, CARE, ILO and others.

A review of WIN’s lessons and experiences has helped to highlight some of the gaps in FAO’s promotion of LDED activities. It is hoped that this can lead to the articulation of a vision of LDED within FAO. The following actions are recommended as a first step:

· Call attention to and prioritize LDED and sustainable livelihoods as a legitimate project component in order to address the gap between FAO HQ normative work and field practice. It is important that FAO financial officers realize the importance of timing and that the result of inaction or delay can result in loss of momentum, demoralization, reversal of gains made in local initiatives, and credibility problems for FAO with partners and stakeholders. The gap between normative work in LDED at FAO HQ and the field also needs to be addressed.

· Build advocacy for LDED activities

WIN was not conceptualized as an income-generating project. At WIN’s inception there was no institutional unit within FAO concerned specifically with LDED represented on the WIN core team to provide conceptual guidance or technical backstopping. Neither was there a strong advocate or focal point to effectively push for any such initiatives.

Projects need to be conceived of differently, so that technical sectors are recognized as only one component. The aim must be for more diversified, reliable livelihood streams and improved food security and nutrition for poorer households.

· Increase technical backstopping to projects with an LDED dimension An LDED expert should be included on project core teams. Regional offices should maintain an inventory of these experts within their region.

· Continue to identify promising and best practices, and integrate them into project design

Focus on asset creation, and building capacities in microfinance, credit, post-harvest value added activities, and business skills among participants. Promote small business development and training among groups, particularly women’s groups and ethnic minorities.

· Organize various fora, workshops and working groups on LDED

Fora should be organized at FAO HQ, national and international levels to share experiences and information, and to begin a dialogue on the visioning process. The outcome should be a common strategy and agenda to further support the LDED efforts of governments and rural households. This requires broad input from stakeholders at multiple levels.

· Reform internal administrative processes

FAO’s internal accounting and administrative procedures can have a negative impact on people-centered project activities and emerging LDED activities. Many constraints occurred due to procedural, administrative or conceptual rigidity within FAO^[38]. For example, new LDED activities in Zambia were identified during PRAs that were not in the Annual Work Plan and Budget (AWPB). Funds to support those activities were therefore not approved by FAO finance officers at the national and HQ levels. Demands for justification of the activities were sent from FAO HQ, resulting in long delays and/or inaction.

· Based on WIN’s experience, certain institutional reforms should be considered to better enable FAO to support LDED. These include:

- Increased flexibility in project documents, annual work plans and budgets;

- Decentralization of financial authorization to the national level.

- Adequate institutional support and resources for LDED at all levels;

- More expertise in LDED made available at the regional and national levels;

- Build in LDED outcome indicators in project monitoring and evaluation frameworks.

· Build LDED expertise at national level

The national WIN teams generally lacked expertise in LDED activities such as food processing, business skills development, and microfinance. The teams in Nepal and Zambia worked closely with NGO partners to address such issues. In Zambia some expertise was included in the national steering committee. WIN-Cambodia benefited from having one part-time national consultant who specialized in microfinance, with various international consulting missions also providing technical backstopping support. However, such missions were costly and tended to overwhelm the national team with many recommendations which were often not taken up.

· Prepare flexible work plans and annual budgets

Annual work plans and budgets should be made less rigid, allowing initiatives identified at grassroots level to emerge and to flourish.

· Place a prominent link to LDED on the FAO website

FAO’s activities, materials and case studies on LDED should be made widely available via Internet to other organizations and field projects.

· Broaden the mandate and composition of national steering committees

Some projects could benefit from a national level advisory group for the purpose of technically advising and backstopping LDED staff. This suggestion may be more feasible in some countries than others. National expertise in LDED may already be fully tapped, and not able to participate. An alternative model is the broadly-based steering committee formed by WIN-Zambia, with strong representation from NGOs, national universities, small business associations, chambers of commerce and others with professional experience in LDED.

· Policy dimensions

While projects may use decentralized participatory planning methods, the programs of governments and line ministries still take place in a traditional top-down manner. Local coordinating bodies need greater control over situation analysis, planning, resource allocation and M & E functions^[39]. The experience of WIN and other people-cantered projects may have an important role to play in advocating for institutional reform.

7.3 Conclusions

Most WIN groups have only one to two years of experience with their IGAs, and are still learning to manage their businesses and are gaining experience with each new production cycle. We are still learning about the longer-term outcomes and impacts of the pilot WIN approach and its practices, and do not yet know the longer-term feasibility of the initiatives taken by the groups. However, some preliminary observations and conclusions can be drawn.

1. Did WIN’s multi-disciplinary approach foster the emergence of local enterprises?

Yes, because the enterprises in Nepal and Zambia would not have emerged without WIN’s core role in group strengthening and capacity building in IGA and other topics.

2. How did this process occur?

A tentative conclusion is that a combination of practices and processes led to the more promising outcomes. Each in itself would not likely result in a successful outcome. For example, PRA and community action planning might not lead to a successful IGA. The presence of a well-trained multi-disciplinary team alone would not necessarily result in a cohesive local group managing their own enterprise. Capacity-building or business training in a specific IGA does not mean that a successful enterprise will materialize (as we saw in the Cambodia food processing example). It was the combination and integrated linking of these and other people-centered practices in a holistic process-oriented manner that led to the identification, start-up and operation of new economic enterprises by local people.

Most of the organizational practices used by WIN (PRA, community action planning, PM & E, etc.) are common to many SL projects. Other practices are more specific to LDED initiatives (management training, leadership skills development, accounting, business and marketing training, feasibility assessments, etc,). The effective combining of these created the conditions for the pursuit of LDED activities.

Many participants were able to diversify their livelihoods after WIN’s intervention. In Nepal, WIN participants previously earned their livelihoods as indentured laborers, who, when freed from bondage lived in squatter camps with few resources and limited economic capacity. Others lived in irrigation command areas but without access to arable land or irrigation, and consequently worked as agricultural laborers, foraged from forests, or were marginalized subsistence producers. In Zambia, WIN participants were generally subsistence maize farmers in rain fed areas. Many were co-wives in polygamous households with little control over decisions, resources or their own labor.

By 2003, participants were able to add market-oriented vegetables, livestock, fish and other outputs to their production systems. The WIN groups saved money, and put new land into market-oriented production on a group basis, using micro-irrigation technologies. Their farming systems and crop mix became more diversified, and brought the possibility of selling the new outputs at local markets. As a group, women were generally able to control their collective resources, although changing power relationships at the household level have yet to be explored.

WIN introduced a change in local thinking, recognising the contribution of women to the local economy and so raising the confidence of previously marginalised producers. Some income has been gained from the modest levels of sales of animals, vegetables, eggs and fodder. There are significant variations from site to site, and country to country, as regards participants’ capacity to enter the market with their produce. There is also variation in the degree to which participants have adopted the technologies introduced. This may be due to the short time period that WIN was operational in the three countries. Because there have been only limited opportunities to communicate with participants since WIN’s termination it is difficult to quantify the actual level of activity in the marketplace by WIN participants. We saw that groups in Nepal and Zambia had more motivation and initiative, higher investments of time and local resources, and a clearer sense of ownership of their IGAs than in Cambodia, where the combination and linking of supportive practices was not as evident. Ultimately, it was the leadership style of the national coordinator that determines this iterative linking process, especially when supported by a constructive policy environment and encouragement from the CTA and project core team.

3. Do gaps exist in the WIN practices? Did some operational practices hinder the emergence of IGAs?

Clearly yes! A major gap was the absence of a specific LDED strategy, guidelines or backstopping capacity, both in the project document and in the institutional support available to the teams in the field. A related factor was the lack of LDED expertise among WIN team members at all levels.

Similarly, centralized decision making and top-down project planning also hindered the emergence of local LDED initiatives. WIN-Cambodia does not appear to be as successful in achieving promising LDED outcomes as Nepal and Zambia. Furthermore, centralized budgetary control at HQ essentially undercut decision-making and management by the WIN national coordinators in their efforts to promote LDED and other activities.

The approaches and technologies tested and introduced by WIN have shown promise for broader application. First, WIN’s multi-disciplinary district team concept has been tested in various contexts with very good results, especially in Nepal and Zambia. Both national governments have observed that the approach is cost-effective in terms of maximizing human resources, and reduces duplication of effort. Second, the people-cantered planning approaches used by the WIN teams have resulted in a variety of local self-help actions. Third, technologies tested and introduced have resulted in diversifying income streams, or improved household food security.

In sum, the experience of WIN in Nepal and Zambia has shown that the iterative use of people-centered practices, and decentralized management can create a more constructive environment for local action. Once enabling conditions have been established, even the poorest farmers will seize the opportunity to diversify their production systems and income streams, and will initiate their own IGAs.