The goal of the Supporting small forest enterprises: a facilitator’s toolkit is to help supporters of small and medium forest enterprises (SMFEs) do their job better. It targets ‘facilitators’ both at the international level (e.g. donors) but especially at the national level (e.g. government extension services and non government organizations (NGOs)) – but it is not written for enterprises themselves.

Ultimately, the kit aims to help reduce poverty and promote sustainability through guidance that helps support institutions to better link small forest enterprises to each other, to markets, to service providers and to policy processes (such as national forest programs). The immediate intention is to empower forest enterprise support institutions by giving them sufficient confidence to launch into some practical and useful interventions – basing their confidence on tried and tested approaches and successes from elsewhere.

The toolkit is arranged in a series of self-explanatory modules (or tools), each of which provides step by step guidance for a different element of SMFE support. There is inevitably some overlap between the modules (or tools). Nevertheless, the toolkit follows a logical progression beginning with broad international considerations on setting up capacity building programs for SMFE support (primarily aimed at donors), then moving to considerations of national level planning and capacity building, before providing more hands on advice for direct facilitation activities.

Each of the sixteen modules (or tools) begins with a purpose statement that clarifies what type of guidance the module provides. There are then a series of steps, often illustrated by boxes and figures, that include the main content of each module. Finally, authors have included a number of practical tips, based on their own experience, followed by a section that points to further information. In this field there are innumerable useful manuals and tools already in existence and this last section tries to point to some of the more useful ones.

Read Supporting small forest enterprises: a facilitator’s toolkit.