It is now widely accepted that promotion of large number of livelihoods, especially for the rural poor and women has emerged as the most significant development challenge of the century. Some estimates show that more than 12 to 15 million new livelihoods need to be promoted every year in India alone, to ensure near full employment.

However, two significant bottlenecks in promoting large numbers of livelihoods, especially for the rural poor do exist, such as: inadequate availability of knowledge base on how to support/ promote large number of livelihoods, and inadequate availability of trained human resources who can participate in this work effectively.

ILRT has developed an unique livelihood education program for practitioners “Fundamentals of Livelihood Promotion”. 

The major objectives of the course are –

• To familiarize with various updated conceptual frameworks and practical approaches to Livelihood Promotion documented in the 4th Edition of the Resource book on Livelihood Promotion
• To be equipped with the tools and methodologies to understand the household level livelihood portfolios and the social, political and economic context of livelihoods
• To build ability to work with practitioners to design situationally appropriate livelihood interventions ”

Course contents

• Building Livelihood Perspective of Development
• Building Livelihood Perspective of a Household
• Environment and livelihoods
• Meaning of Livelihood and Difference between Livelihood Promotion and Income Generation Approaches
• Various building blocks for understanding livelihoods
• Sustainable Livelihood Approach
• Coolie’s framework
• Opportunity based Livelihood Promotion
• Rights Based Approach for Livelihood Promotion
• Livelihood promotion approach for highly disadvantaged
• Livelihoods in Value Chain
• Livelihood Portfolio Mapping – Tool
• Assessment of Local Market
• Assessing Political Economy
• Exploring External Environment
• Field visit Guidelines
• Sharing experience, analysis of field data and preparation of presentation
• Guidelines for analysis of field data and presentation
• Consolidation of learning from the field
• Identification of Livelihood Approach suitable for the area based on data collected
• Understanding current context on Livelihood promotion
• Intervention perspective of different Livelihood Actors
• Design of Localised Livelihood Intervention
• Operationalizing the plan
• Consolidation of learning and application on their own context

The curriculum on Pro-poor Value Chain and Market System has been developed by Value Chain capacity Building Network (VCB-N) with the support of Helvetas, Hivos and member Centre of Excellences (CoEs) including ILRT after rigorous training need assessment of IFAD projects in Asia & Pacific region including India. VCB-N conducted series of training of trainers (ToTs) to build capacity of professionals of CoEs on organizing training on this theme. In addition to this, the curriculum includes practical experience of ILRT on VC & MSD which are based on its long experience of knowledge building and dissemination on value chain development while working with BASIX group and other national and international agencies.

The broad objective of the training program is to provide frameworks, principles, tools and processes that help projects and their implementing partners conduct market systems analysis, designing interventions for sustainable and large-scale impacts, and monitoring and measuring results.

• Building perspective on need for pro-poor value chain development and important concepts of value chain and market system development
• Acquire and deepen knowledge and skills on how to conduct good market analysis and translate analysis into designing successful interventions
• Learn about how to apply and integrate different tools in actual projects
• Understand how to design and implement monitoring and results measurement systems to know what works and what does not and why
• Access and share individual experiences on market analysis, intervention design and monitoring

The current curriculum focuses on exploring and identifying market opportunities for making suitable value chain interventions so as to enhance the participation and benefits of the primary producers. The course broadly covered –<?p>

• Concept of value chain and market system development
• Steps in project cycle management (PCM) in agri-value chain & market system projects
• Agri-value chain & market system analysis – Donut Model
• Analysing Value Chain and Intervention Design
• Designing pro-poor agri-value chain & market system interventions
• Facilitation of agri-value chain & market system interventions
• Monitoring and evaluation of agri-value chain & market system interventions

Non Timber Forest Product (NTFPs) are major source of livelihood security for the communities especially the tribal residing in and around forest areas. ILRT conducted a systematic situational analysis of NTFPs based livelihood in central India and north-eastern states. The situational analysis also helped to identify capacity gaps among professional of livelihood promoting organisation (LPOs) engaged in NTFPs based livelihood promotion. To address the issue, the present course is designed to build capacities and skills of professionals on NTFPs based livelihood promotion.

The broad objective of the present training programme is to enhance understanding, know- how and skills of practitioners in planning and implementation of NTFPs based value chain development interventions for livelihood promotion of the tribal and other forest dwelling communities. The specific objectives of the training are as follows –

• To understanding critical role of NTFPs in tribal economy – socio-economic conditions of the tribals and role of NTFPs in ensuring tribal livelihood security, major NTFPs – production areas, scope and gaps in the sector.
• To understanding NTFP based value chain analysis and making value chain development interventions for different NTFPs.
• To enhance abilities on promotion of community based enterprises for organised collection, production, value addition and marketing of NTFPs.
• Understanding design and implementation of NTFPs based livelihood promotion interventions such as sustainable harvesting and collection, in-situ and ex-situ conservation, production, value addition, product development, branding, packaging, certification, legal aspects of NTFPs etc.
• Developing marketing linkages and planning for marketing of NTFPs including developing marketing channels, marketing message and branding and marketing management.
• Developing business plan for NTFPs enterprises for planning and management their business activities.

The course builds conceptual perspectives on livelihood, NTFPs, value chain development, NTFPs based enterprise, cluster approach and develops skills of professionals on identification and making NTFPs based value chain intervention including understanding its policy and legal aspects. The broad topics/contents covered under the course are as follows-

• Overview of concept of livelihood and socio-economic conditions of the tribal areas, linkages between tribal livelihoods and natural resources,
• NTFPs concept and definition
• Issues of primary forest produce gathers and need for value chain intervention in NTFP sector
• NTFPs value chain analysis and development
• Promotion of enterprises for NTFPs value chain interventions, concept of enterprises and their types
• Cluster approach for developing sustainable NTFPs businesses
• Prioritization of NTFPs
• NTFPs collection, aggregation, storage and transportation
• NTFPs processing and technology
• Sustainable harvesting of NTFPs
• Market linkages and marketing of NTFPs
• New product development and innovation
• Business planning for NTFP enterprises
• Certification: opportunity and method for sustainable management of NTFPs
• NTFPs governance: policies , Acts and regulations

To address the issues of small producers especially small and marginal farmers and ensuring them remunerative income by linking the local produce with bigger value chains, efforts have been made to producers’ collectives. In past few years, key legislations that support the institutions of the poor and farming communities have been enacted viz. Producer Companies and Model Co-operatives and accordingly well-meaning programs and schemes too have been rolled out.

Taking advantage of the congenial policy environment, many government and non-governmental organizations have been engaging in promotion of different kinds of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) such as producer company, co-operatives and federations. Enabling FPOs in actively engaging in agri-value chain activities has been observed as one of the successful interventions to enhance the household income of the farming communities. ILRT has designed a course on “Integrating Value chains in Farmer Producer Organisations” based on situational analysis and training needs assessment of LPOs involved in FPO promotion and value chain activities.

• Understand role of agri-value chain analysis in promotion of livelihoods and concept of inclusive value chain
• Enhance awareness on opportunities for value addition at pre, during and post production stages of agri-value chains
• Appreciate key reasons for non-participation of CBOs (Farmer Groups, Producer organisations) in value chain interventions
• Gain skills in developing a plan to enable/motivate CBOs to become effective players in value chain activities ultimately to enhance household income of farming community
• Training Program on Agri-Business Model and Business Planning of FPOs

• Introduction to Value Chain
• Value Chain Analysis – meaning and Use of VCA
• Value Addition Process
• Some Commonly Used Value Addition Processes in the Specific Crop Value Addition during Post-Harvest Period:
• Farmer Producer Organizations in Value Addition
• Collective Action – individual and group behaviour
• Scaling up Viability requirements for value addition
• Different types of value chain players and their Limitations and Advantages
• Experience of Inclusive Value Chain Intervention- Business perspective
• Experience of Inclusive value chain intervention – Institutional perspective
• Different Models of Inclusive Value Chain
• Guided Field Visit
• Presentation of Value Chain Map & Analysis based on field visit
• Exercise in Guided Creativity
• To present the plan in thematic small groups