Background

Winrock International India has been managing a series of Small Grants Program (SGP) for the Ford Foundation, New Delhi for the past decade. Initially this program focused on improving forestry and water resource management and went on to develop a focus on mountain ecosystems in the western Himalayas. The first phase of this last SGP aimed to promote conservation-oriented, natural resource-based local enterprise development. In a second phase, WII along with the Ford Foundation has identified two resource organizations to help strengthen the monitoring and evaluation capacities of existing grantees of the Foundation that undertake community-based enterprise development activities. These two organizations are working across a range of sectors, including sustainable mountain development, crafts, non-timber forest produce, agriculture, and dairy in different parts of the country. Such capacity building will take place on the basis of long-term, intensive interactions between these resource agencies and partner organizations. As a secondary objective, these interactions are expected to be structured in a manner that will facilitate the generation of learning at either the sub-sector or sectoral level with regard to the kinds of factors that most commonly determine outcomes of such community-based enterprises.

Objective

Main objectives of the programmes are as follows:

• Provide support to the appropriate institutions for promoting conservation-oriented, natural resource-based local enterprise development
• Through the ‘Business Development Service’ approach, facilitate a shift from ‘enterprise development’ to ‘conservation-based enterprise development’.
• Reorient and build capacities of community-based institutions for natural as well as financial asset building.
• Develop systems and indicators to monitor and assess the impacts of the grants on local livelihoods and biodiversity conservation.

• Grant disbursal and administration: Identify critical conservation and livelihood issues, in consultation with the Foundation, facilitate grant proposal development, discuss implementation frameworks, work plans and methodologies, monitoring plans, deliverables; monitor grants against deliverables/milestones/financial disbursals and ensure timely closure.
• Technical and institutional support: Undertake scientific baseline and assessment studies to document and assess the socio-economic and environmental impacts of the grants; develop a repository of relevant information and a roster of experts/organizations for effective transfer of knowledge; ensure effective incorporation of the conservation objectives in the project design; jointly with the grantees, document processes followed in implementation as well the resulting impacts; distil lessons learnt from the approaches adopted and results achieved in consultation with the grantees; and facilitate the scaling-out (horizontal dissemination through the grantees; networks and associations) and scaling-up (vertical dissemination through the Ford Foundation’s and WII’s networks and associations) of the lessons learnt through publications, workshops, one-on-one interactions.

• A scientific baseline and assessment study conducted to document and assess the socio-economic and environmental impacts of the grants.
• Strengthened technical and financial capacity of intermediary organizations to promote sustainable development.
• Gaps identified and addressed in planning and implementation of selected initiatives balancing conservation concerns and supporting local livelihoods.