Sustainable Livelihoods Enhancement and Diversification (SLED)

1.2.5 Identifying service providers and enablers
The way institutions function (or fail to function) will become increasingly important as SLED groups and the
community move from the Discovery phase to the Direction and Doing phases. In order to help to establish
an “enabling” environment, SLED facilitators need to understand what existing institutions can play an
effective and supportive role. It will be equally important to understand those institutions that may constitute
barriers to positive change and which either to need to be reformed or by-passed in some way.
People’s livelihoods are strongly affected by the organisations and institutions operating in the communities
and areas where they live. In the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework discussed in the Introduction, these
organisations and institutions are divided into “Enablers”, who can be thought of as those who establish the
“rules”, and “Service Providers”. However, in reality, the dividing lines between the categories are often
vague, especially where there are informal or traditional institutions which have important and complex roles
which are not well defined or documented. Understanding how these organisations and institutions work
(how they are organised), what they are supposed do (their formal or recognised roles and responsibilities),
what they actually do, how they influence people’s livelihoods and who in the community participates in
them (and why) will play a key role in understanding the livelihoods of different groups of people.
Institutions are often complex and the way that they function in a community will often be linked with
institutional arrangements at a wider level – the local area, the region and even the country as a whole.
Many of these wider institutions will become particularly important as the SLED process develops and SLED
facilitators work on creating an “enabling” environment for livelihood change. However, at the beginning of
the process, the first step is to identify those organisations and institutions that operate locally and are
recognised as having an active role in the community.
The reporting format below provides a simple framework for thinking through the key aspects of local
institutions which need to be understood as they are likely to directly affect people’s livelihoods. Some of the
information required to fill in this matrix can be drawn from the initial secondary data review, but the
household interviews will be particularly important for identifying informal institutions and in identifying the
real functions of organisations and institutions from the point of view of people in the community. This is
important because considerable differences will often be encountered between what institutions are
supposed to do – their official purpose – and what they actually do in practice. Often these differences will
provide important clues regarding the way power is distributed within the community and the factors which
include or exclude different community groups from participation in these institutions or the benefits which
they generate.
enablers
relationships
service
providers
relationships
influences
relationships
people
Figure 6. The relationships between people, enablers and service providers.
Often it is the relationships between institutions and different groups in the community which is as important
as the internal structure and functioning of institutions or organisations. In turn, these relationships will often
be influenced by factors such as power, politics, local culture, market arrangements and differences in
language (see the diagrammatic representation of the Sustainable Livelihood Framework – Fig. 4). For
example, a local NGO or government department may claim to work for the good of the whole community
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