Expanding Community Enterprise and Economic Development or EXCEED is the training and advisory wing of the Non-Timber Forest Products – Exchange Programme (NTFP-EP) targeted to support the work of NGOs, government agencies and community-based organizations in Asia on sustainable livelihoods in rural, forest and protected areas. It specializes in community-based non-timber forest products (NTFP) enterprise development anchored on sustainable resource management.
In recent years, natural and environment-friendly has become the trend, fashionable, chic and popular. This is perhaps the reason why setting up NTFP-based enterprises seemed easier. However, making them viable and sustainable is easier said than done. Market demands continue to change – the requirements for quality products become more and more stringent. The changing climate pattern significantly affects almost the entire chain of enterprise operations from the supply of raw materials to the delivery of products to the market. The business environment continuously becomes more competitive especially with the upcoming integration of the production and market base in the ASEAN region in 2015. All these inevitably boil down to one point – the need to strengthen and enhance the operations of the NTFP enterprises in order to thrive in this immensely challenging environment.
Upscaling Community-based Enterprises: Ensuring Viability, Sustainability and Resilience is aimed at enhancing the skills and knowledge of NTFP producers who have already embarked on their enterprises and who have basic understanding and know-how to manage an NTFP enterprise. The training will entail examining the enterprises’ internal value chain to map out their sources of strengths and weakness – harvesting and processing of raw materials, procurement, production, operations, storage and packaging, distribution, marketing, human resources. This stocktaking exercise would allow NTFP enterprises to come up with inputs in:
Establishing standards, that will meet up and align with needs and requirements of the market.
Increasing human resource capacity, systems management, connectivity, technology and market competence to address larger volumes and markets
Formulating resource management plans to ensure that expansion of the business will not place undue stress on the resource; and
Employing climate-proofing techniques to increase climate-resilience of NTFP enterprises;
This training is for managers, facilitators and key personnel in existing NTFP enterprises who want to make the NTFP enterprises thrive in a continuously challenging and competitive business environment.
Contents and focus
The training shall be focused on:
Sustainable consumption and production of NTFP based products – the standardization of production processes to produce “sustainable” and quality products which are socially accountable and environmentally responsible that have been agreed upon by the community of artisans/producers and meet up with the quality standards of the market
Resource Management Planning which covers regeneration, sustainable harvesting and participatory resource monitoring; and
Basic understanding on disaster risk assessment and climate change adaptation that will guide in identifying climate-proofing techniques for NTFP enterprises;
Training methodologies
A combination of structured learning experiences, lecture-discussions, workshops which will be conducted in three full days and an additional day for the learning visit to one NTFP enterprise.
Schedule
The course will have 3 days of lectures, 1 day of field visit and 1 day of processing and preparing a re-entry plan from 23 to 28 September 2014. It will draw learning from the experiences of NTFP-EP partner communities and organizations.
September 22 – Arrival in Cagayan de Oro
September 23 – Module 1: Upscaling business
September 24 – Module 2: Sustainability and growth
September 25 – Module 3: Climate proofing enterprise
September 26 – Field exposure*
September 27 – Processing and closing ceremonies
September 28 – Departure from Cagayan de Oro
*The participants will visit the Sunflower Community Weavers, a wild abaca-fiber based weaving enterprise with a natural dye processing facility in the mountains of Malaybalay, Bukidnon. This will be an opportunity to interact with the community as they share their lessons and challenges in upscaling their enterprise and managing their resources and their efforts at climate proofing their business. The participants will also visit Lindungawan Showroom and Café where Sunflower’s ‘hinabol’ handwoven eco-textile and other NTFP-based products made by partner communities are sold.
Fees
The five-days pilot training is offered at a discounted rate of 150 euros/day. Further reduced cost of 132 euros/day will be given to those registering on or before July 4, 2014.
The cost is inclusive of training materials, accommodations (multiple-sharing rooms, additional costs for single room requests), meals, and local travels. The fee does not include international plane fares.
Registration
For more information, inquiries, and registration, kindly send an email to exceed@ntfp.org with the following information: name, organization, position, and address.