The project “Supporting Community Based Sustainable Forest Management and Economic Empowerment of Women in Central Region of Nepal” has been implemented in Kathmandu, Makawanpur and Sarlahi districts by the consortium of HIMAWANTI Nepal, ASMITA Nepal and Community Resource Management Centre (CRMC) in close supervision of Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation since 2014.

The Asia-Pacific Network for Sustainable Forest Management and Rehabilitation (APFNet) has provided financial support and technical backstopping with the aim to contribute to rehabilitation and restoration of forestland through sustainable forest management and increase the income generating opportunities for women and forest dependent communities. The project has focused to assist on sustainable forest management and improve the forest condition through the mobilization of the forest dependent community and to generate the opportunity for the livelihood enhancement through the women lead enterprises development.

In Makawanpur district, Ashmita Nepal has took lead role in establishing mini-enterprise of wooden handicraft through the sustainable use of forest management. Makawanpur district is rich in forest resource in both timber and Non timber forest products. The project has selected four community forest user groups namely Piple Pokhara, Niureni, Banaskhadi and Manakamana CFUGs, near the core city area. Most of the households of the CFUGs are from ethnic people like Rai, Magar, and Tamang etc. Altogether 500 ha area has been covered by the four community forest.

In the initial stage, the forest inventory survey of four community forests were conducted and produced the baseline information for the development of forest management plan for each forests. The capacity building of forest users on appropriate silviculture practices and harvesting of timber forest products for better use of forests have been managed to initiate sustainable forest management through local communities.

The project has conducted assessment and reassessment of community forest management mechanism through spider web. Value chain analysis of the wooden handicrafts has been prepared before initiating the training. The value chain has identified various areas of coordination, policy bridging, and market value along with net profit to the communities.

The value chain analysis was done administering both qualitative and quantitative research method. Key informant interview, focus group discussion, participatory rural appraisal and field observation was done for the analysis.