Building Resilience and Inclusive Growth of Highland farming systems for rural Transformation (BRIGHT)

The BRIGHT project’s vision is to promote inclusive economic growth and rural transformation through equitable integration into value chains. The core of the project focuses on strengthening farm households’ adaptive management capacity to develop strategies and adopt behaviors that bolster resilience through inclusive decision-making using Integrated Farm Plans (IFPs). Household members’ ambitions and assets will inform this joint household vision to build farm-household and farming-system resilience. Recognizing the complex interdependencies between people and ecosystems that affect resilience, the BRIGHT project will work with farm households to promote the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices, including diversification of production and use of quality inputs, to mitigate the negative impact of climate-related shocks and boost production. Farm households will explore alternative income generating activities, including off-farm and non-farm activities, to build resilience of the households. Farmers and their families will improve their management and maintenance of household assets—including natural resources, such as soils, and livestock. Natural resource conservation at the farm-plot level and the community level is critical to strengthening the resilience of farm households and farming communities to climate-related shocks. Within the community, resilience activities will strengthen social safety nets and social cohesion through village savings and loan associations (VSLAs) and nutrition trainings. This will ensure that farm households are integrated into robust formal and informal social networks that can smooth the impact of shocks, both climate and economic. And in the widest ring of influence within the BRIGHT project, market access will empower subsistence and market-ready farm households to integrate equitably and on their terms into value chains, through collective action in their producer organizations, and generate a living income. These concentric rings of resilience, centered around empowered and intrinsically motivated farm households and radiating out through the community to the market, will transform rural farm households and communities into informed, resilient societies that are able to persist, adapt, and transform their circumstances in the face of market and climate shocks.