Introduction

This Rapid Guide aims at improving the effectiveness of projects in reducing rural poverty by grounding project design and implementation in an understanding of rural livelihoods and the institutions that affect them. It is intended to contribute to the achievement of the FAO Strategic Objectives by improving the contribution of field projects and programmes to reducing rural poverty and household food insecurity in support of the Millennium Development Goals.

Many efforts to reduce poverty have failed or proved to be unsustainable because they have not fully understood local institutions and the way that they influence the livelihoods of the poor. New institutions set up to support the poor have often proved inappropriate or have been undermined by existing institutions that were either not recognised by relevant stakeholders or poorly understood.

The Rapid Guide is based on a publication by Norman Messer and Philip Townsley, entitled "Local institutions and livelihoods: Guidelines for analysis," FAO: Rural Development Division, Rome 2003. It also incorporates feedback from field tests undertaken in Cambodia^[1] and Uganda^[2] in 2002-3, with the support of the FAO Netherlands' Partnership Programme.

The authors of the field tests recommended - as a complement to the existing published guidelines - two additional products for two different audiences: (a) a condensed version of the Guidelines tailored for use by project design, supervision and evaluation missions (Rapid Guide for Missions) and (b) a more detailed Field Guide for Practitioners undertaking participatory diagnostic studies. The current assignment was to prepare a Rapid Guide for Missions.

The main users of the Rapid Guide for Missions are expected to be development agency staff, project staff, consultants and other professionals involved in the design, implementation or monitoring and evaluation of projects, programmes and specific field activities. The main users of any future Field Guide for Practitioners, on the other hand, would be in-country participatory facilitators, local community development staff, extension workers and front line project staff.

The Rapid Guide complements the longer FAO publication: "Local institutions and livelihoods: Guidelines for analysis" (above). Related publications of partner agencies include "A Source Book - Institutional and Organizational Analysis for Pro-Poor Change: Meeting IFAD's Millennium Challenge," IFAD: 2004, and "A Practitioner's Guide for Institutional Analysis of Rural Development Programmes," IFAD 2005 (forthcoming). The Rapid Guide differs from other publications in that it is designed for use by people who are not necessarily specialists in institutional and livelihood analysis. It is intended for use by ordinary members of multi-disciplinary teams involved in the design, implementation and evaluation of agricultural and rural development projects. It suggests that analysis of local institutions and livelihoods should be combined with regular mission work and become part of the core responsibilities of teams concerned with project design, implementation support and evaluation. This differs from the approach of agencies such as World Bank and Asian Development Bank, who treat social and institutional assessment as separate exercises, undertaken by independent teams of experts, whose connection with project design, supervision and evaluation teams is often weak.