Project ECA, as it is abbreviated from “Strengthening Southern Palawan’s Community-Based Enterprises through Evaluation of their capital assets for forest conservation and protection”, took place in the middle of the pandemic 2021 in South Palawan. Eleven Community-based Enterprises (CBE) from the provinces of Quezon, Rizal, Sofronio Espanola, Batazara and Brooke’s Point took part in the assessments.
With two local research assistants and considerable support from local community organizers and NGOs, I looked at the capital assets of forest-resource dependent community-based enterprises and their wants and needs for the future. I adapted the research to be as involving as possible to the people, merging the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (Department for International Development (DFID)) with participatory assessment tools from FAO, categorízed under indicators from CIFOR.
The members of the CBEs quickly warmed up to this type of interaction and research, and shared a huge amount of information, that we qualitatively analyzed and used for recommendations for stakeholders ranging from local government units to NGOs and potential funders.
This work hopefully serves as the basis for new projects and programs for nature conservation and social entrepreneurship for these eleven CBEs. Please reach out to me if you are a funder or an expert that may be able to provide support – I will be happy to connect to the relevant persons and entities.
The communities are looking for support in any of the five capital assets: physical, natural, human, social, and financial. For those looking for further in-depth information, community-profiles as part of the extensive research report are available up on request.
Thank you and also shoot a message if you have questions or ideas!
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