Introduction

Many organizations have established community enterprises and green marketing intermediaries as strategies for livelihoods development for forest-based communities as well as forest conservation. Sustainability and scaling up of both marketing intermediaries and community enterprises, especially beyond project support, are goals some of these support organizations and communities have yet to achieve.

While, they are operational, often, marketing intermediaries and community enterprises have difficulty in scaling up and upgrading to the next level towards consistency, sustainability and growth. Many are unable to systematize and streamline their operations, and expand markets, incurring high costs and limiting profits. Main problems encountered are internal and human resource issues arising and, business and financial management challenges. Issues on appropriate community enterprises and on planning for sustainability are often faced by local communities, business managers, project officers and organizations. While varying conditions in different areas may require customized community enterprise models, in this training, we explore how consolidating community enterprises could support sustainability and improve benefits for producers.

Content

The training will cover topics on organizational and human resource strengthening, systems development including, financial and production management, and community enterprise federation and on marketing. Trends in green marketing and retail management will be the main focus.