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Abstract

The social mobilisation programme of the Livelihoods and Forestry Programme (LFP) empowers rural people to more effectively participate in community forestry activities and access benefits and resources. Community facilitators work to develop awareness of issues and rights, and to increase participatory decision-making and transparency. They facilitate better governance and greater equity within Forest User Groups (FUGs) in the management of their forest resources.

Within the prevailing social inequalities in Nepal, LFP works to address social exclusion based on caste, ethnicity and gender as a root cause of poverty and conflict. Through facilitators working at community level in FUGs, LFP works to end discrimination, improve grass-roots governance and empower the voices of poor and excluded people, who are generally women, Dalits and people of minority groups.

The social mobilisation programme is implemented in coordination with a range of stakeholders including local government. Community facilitators are employed through local non-governmental organisations to address issues of inclusion in decision-making and benefit sharing within the community management of forest and other resources. They encourage the utilisation of FUG funds for activities that really benefit the poor such as revolving-credit and match-funding. In their work to bring about the social change required to redress inclusion and power imbalances, they work with the whole community whilst actively addressing the priorities of poor and excluded people.

LFP monitors the impact of its social mobilisation activities through the Livelihoods and Social Inclusion monitoring framework in three domains of change – rules of the game; voice, influence and agency; access to resources and services. It has found that all three need to be balanced in order to bring about lasting social change.