Bhubaneswar: Odisha Livelihoods Mission (OLM) under Panchayati Raj department signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) here yesterday to improve the livelihood portfolio of the rural poor by efficient and effective village-level planning process.

This partnership aims at increasing the productivity in agriculture, livestock and forests through capacity building and information technology based planning by FES.

FES will work with Gram Panchayat Level Federation (GPLF), Cluster Level Federation (CLF) and Self Help Groups (SHGs) covering 1000 Mission Samrudhi Gram Panchayats, 150 blocks in 30 districts as per Mission guidelines.

The MoU was signed by  S.R. Pradhan, Special Mission Director-cum-CEO, OLM and Jagdeesh Rao, Executive Director FES. Dr Nruparaj Sahoo, Joint Secretary-cum-Additional CEO and Meena Das Mohapatra, Regional Team Leader, FES were present on the occasion.

FES will provide support to OLM for building capacity of the field level cadres like Krishi Mitra, Prani Mitra, Community Resource Persons and Community Mobilisers on Natural Resource Management and collective action. Further MoU areas includes building institutions like production clusters, building Farmers Producer Organisations and ensuring market linkage, preparing GP level investment plan on agriculture, livestock, forests targeting rural households, develop GP-wise profile on production cluster using technology, develop plan for enterprise development of surplus production among others.