Evaluation of livelihood zones, rural household trajectories, research and development partners and initiatives in Timor Leste

This SRA project forms the first stage of a planned larger scale project to improve smallholder farm and livelihood productivity with a focus on innovation in soils management and improvement. It has two broad aims: (1) To investigate and document the resource base, livelihood and agronomic strategies of communities in three distinct livelihood zones in preparation for implementing the Stages of Progress (SoP) methodology in 3x2 sets of villages. The 3 proposed livelihood zones comprise: 1) Inland irrigable watersheds, 2) Upland high altitude, 3) Southern rainfed. (2) Contract and train a small team of Timorese project staff including local NGO partners in the Stages of Progress (SoP) methodology and associated qualitative research.