LEAF

LEAF: Livelihoods, Empowerment and Agroforestry
Where do we work?
LEAF interventions are concentrated in Rajshahi Division and Sunamganj District.
A bit of history
The first Sustainable Land Use (SLU) Programme of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) ran from 1987 to 2003 and included two field-based projects: VFFP (Village and Farm Forestry Project) and CARE-SHABGE. The merger of these two projects resulted in a new project, LEAF (Livelihoods, Empowerment and Agroforestry), which commenced in 2004 .
The first phase of LEAF has, to a high degree, been successful in achieving its objectives with regard to knowledge and skills development, to capacity building of groups and communities and to enabling environment. Community based organisation are now able to acquiring resources and services, building linkages with service organisations and Union Parishad, addressing gender inequalities and involving the extreme poor in income generation activities. Besides, two innovative approaches were successfully developed. The Market Extension approach contributed to diversify and increase income opportunities for poor and extreme poor. The Participatory Gender Analysis helped gender mainstreaming at family, groups as well as community level.
The second phase of LEAF is designed for consolidating and up-scaling the most promising activities of the first phase. The new phase of the project includes promotion of self-propelling processes and considers human rights-based approach as a cross cutting issue. LEAF concentrates its interventions on the "demand side" by facilitating communities' organisations and their networks to express their demand, raise their voices and access suitable stakeholders (market actors, service providers, local government, etc). At the same time, it collaborates with other SDC projects (SAAKTI, AFIP, SHARIQUE) which focus their interventions on the supply side (service providers, local government, nursery associations).

Who do we work for?

We work for poor and extreme rural households in all 16 districts of Rajshahi Division and the Sunamganj District of Sylhet division, which represent 50% of the poorest districts of Bangladesh . More than 50% of the population of these districts live below the poverty line. These households tend to have less than one acre of cultivable land and 34% have no land except for their homesteads. Many depend on their homesteads for about half of their requirements in food and cash. The rest is provided by very diverse livelihoods strategies, which, for the extreme poor are often related to non-farm activities.

However, we do not exclude to collaborate with other categories of households within the communities like small and medium farmers. In fact, the process remains flexible and open to other members interested within the communities irrespective of their wealth categories. The operational principle of the project is to start as a key entry point with poor and extreme poor categories in order to strengthen them through an empowerment process, which is able to dialogue and build up sound collaboration with other wealth categories in equal balance, contributing also in the local development process.

		Our purpose and vision
		LEAF aims to make a substantial contribution to the long-term reduction of poverty through the more sustainable and intensified use of local resources".
		The purpose of the project is to improve the livelihoods of a total of 125,000 poor and extreme poor households of Rajshahi Division and Sunamganj District through developing human and institutional capacities for accessing and using social and economic opportunities.
The ultimate vision of LEAF is that community organisations and their respective networks are able to identify, organise and lead their local development initiatives based on their priorities, in mobilising and exploiting resources and services available at their level on a continuing basis and without further substantial inputs from development projects. The benefits are shared with extreme poor and vulnerable households living within communities. This vision is illustrated below.
Our objectives
•	Poor and extreme poor households have increased income and employment opportunities through skills and knowledge development for accessing and using local resources and services.
•	Community organisations and their networks have improved their capacity to lead and manage local development process and access to services and markets.
•	Project efficiency and effectiveness has enhanced through the promotion of exchanges and collaboration with other development organisations that facilitate the leverage of interventions.

Our approaches
LEAF has a poverty focus: it targets poor and extreme poor households such as indigenous communities, women headed households and the landless. In order to effectively address rural poverty, LEAF follows a combination of four approaches:
•	A livelihoods approach - that tries to identify the opportunities to develop farmers' human, social, financial, physical and natural capital.
•	A market approach - targeting pro-poor economic growth with a better exploitation of markets, the creation of new opportunities and the development of a socio-economic environment that benefits the poor.
•	Human and Institutional Development (HID) - and its underlying values like empowerment, equity (including gender) and self-reliance - constitute a link between the two previous approaches. HID plays a major role in establishing new relations between stakeholders and in the promotion of self-help processes - prerequisites for the sustainability of interventions.
•	Promotion of self- propelling processes - that contributes developing the capacity of communities and groups to continue and expand their activities without the support of LEAF. This approach is also linked with the replication of activities by other groups or communities.
As cross cutting issue, Gender aspects are maintained and strengthened which ensure an equal participation of women and men through a strategy of gender mainstreaming at all levels. LEAF also integrates human rights-based approach as a cross cutting approach.

Our partners
The activities of LEAF are implemented through partnership and collaboration with
•	Cluster platforms (Secondary level of organisation) constituting a main partner of LEAF for implementing activities.
•	Union Parishad, Upazila/district administration and line agencies for addressing community based organisation's demands and developing functional linkages.
•	Private sector (service providers, input sellers, buyers, large companies) and financial institutions for rural communities in order to easily get access to innovative services and to scale up groups' business activities.
•	20 local NGOs- working as implementing partners facilitating our interventions and approaches at community organisations level.
•	SAAKTI, AFIP, SHARIQUE (SDC projects), and KATALYST as collaborative partners in order to promote synergies in strengthening collaboration with local government and private sector.
•	Development agencies, other organisations and like-minded projects at regional and national level.

Our assets
•	4,554 groups of 122,305 rural poor and extreme poor households, well organised and involved very actively with local government and market actors.
•	1,392 cluster platforms have established secondary level of organisation in 57 Upazilas of Rajshahi Division and Sunamganj district.
•	Knowledge of the context of small farmers in Bangladesh and of the technological aspects of Agroforestry - gained through 19 years of field experience.
•	Confirmed experience in human and institutional development (HID) and participatory planning and monitoring at community level as well as in supporting extreme poor (landless, Adivashi, women) with flexible approach.
•	Expertise and experience in 15 sub-sectors (fish, milk, vegetable, spices, handicrafts, medicinal plants, etc) in identifying market opportunities, promoting micro and small enterprises and linkage with large market actors and service providers.

Our activities - a few examples

Local planning processes

This year our group planned 18 activities of different types: training sessions in agroforestry, development of our organisational capacities, problem of dowry... With the other groups of the village, we jointly planned to tackle the issue of discrimination in the labour wage between women and men."

Gender mainstreaming

Since I do not mind raising my voice, my group selected me as female mentor, and I received training on gender issue. We organised a participatory gender analysis in our community, which decided to stop the practice of early marriage, dowry and family conflicts resolution in our village."

Promotion of improved agroforestry practices

Earlier, my jackfruit trees produced only a few fruits. Last year we learnt how to control the dropping of jackfruit, and this year I was able to produce more than the double - and even to sell some fruits."

Promotion of small enterprises

I received training on tailoring. Through exchange visit, I learned the potential of making and trading of low-cost baby and ladies garments. I along with other 10 trained extreme poor women of our community established a mini-garments factory. We did not have any income before but now each of us can earn 60 TK/day."

Marketing extension

Through a cost analysis and a market assessment, we discovered that we were loosing in our jute mat business. At present we are producing new types of jute products, with attractive design and colours. We identified good markets outside the village, where we sell our products jointly at 4 times the price as before."

Access to public land

We convinced the chairman and members of our UP and signed a contract on a non-judicial stamp of Tk.150/- for roadside plantation. After 15 years our cluster members would get 80% of income from the roadside plantation while the UP would get 20%. We planted 1,440 saplings with a combination of fruit, timber and medicinal plants on 1.2 km roadsides."

Organised marketing through value chain approach

We used to produce milk and sell to the local market. There was no consistency in price. We established linkage with Milk-Vita and joined its cooperative. This contributed to have a permanent chain for selling our milk at a higher price. We also learned improved management practices of cows with the supports from local Para-vets and Milk-Vita experts."

Special initiative for extreme poor

Our cluster organised a livelihoods fair to demonstrate different income generating activities, like: handicrafts, toys, cake, sweet and paper bag making, beef fattening etc to choose suitable ones by the extreme poor in their contexts. This encouraged me to start making and selling puffed rice as a low-cost and less risky income generating activities. Now, I am earning 60-70 Tk./day by doing this in the nearby bazaar."

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