Northern Mindanao Community Initiatives and Resource Management Project

Northern Mindanao Community Initiatives and Resource Management Project

The high incidence of poverty in Northern Mindanao reflects the vulnerability of most people living in rural areas. Most have limited assets. Many are landless, and some depend on tenant farming or agricultural work for a livelihood. There is a lack of social infrastructure and government support services, and poor people have virtually no access to credit. Illiteracy and unemployment are high, particularly among upland and indigenous peoples. Upland villages are remote, without basic services. The poorest rural people have limited access to important natural resources such as forests and pastures. Women, in particular, suffer from a low level of social and economic development.

In this demand-driven project, IFAD works with the government and the United Nations Office of Project Services to enable poor communities to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate activities that they have chosen themselves. Among the project’s targets are indigenous peoples, fisher families, people who have benefited from agrarian reform, landless workers, people in upland areas, and women in all categories, in 270 of the poorest villages in the target area. Self-help groups — at least 50 per cent of them women —promote savings and work with community institutions to identify activities that can improve their livelihoods, including improved management of land and water resources, fisheries development and off-farm activities. One aim is to develop replicable systems of improved agriculture and natural resource management.

To help indigenous peoples improve their standards of living, the project supports advocacy campaigns, legal assistance and orientation programmes. It also works with indigenous peoples to establish boundaries of ancestral domains and map them, and then to formulate a sustainable development and protection plan.

Source: IFAD