For Environment, Democracy and Livelihoods
With the objective of strengthening the internal governance and making the long term and short term plans of Community Forest User Group (CFUG), two days training was conducted on 21st and 22nd September, 2015 in Sanoban CFUG, one of the Participatory Action Research (PAR) site of CALCNR. The training was organized by CF itself with the technical support and facilitation of ForestAction.
The first day of training focused on the importance of participatory work required to strengthening governance of CF and also how collaborative action of users and EC can help to solve the conflicting issues within CFUG. Simple tools and methods like participatory game, questionnaire, personal views and idea sharing etc. were used to generate evidences and recognize and strengthen community effort. On the second day, participants were divided into five different groups for discussion on different CF areas to develop CFUG visions and plans namely: Forest and environment development, forest based industry development, poverty alleviation program, community development program and organizational development. Among the plans so made, users prioritized some of the plans with an aim to fulfill them within 2 years and rest of them within next 5 years.
In total 64 users representing marginalized to higher class showed their participation, where the female participants were higher in number. Thus the discussion developed the long term and short term CFUG plans and initiated some of the planned activities.