FPO Facilitation Centre

During the course of Yuva Mitra’s working with the FPOs, it was observed that farmers who are the primary members of the FPO’s, generally do not have the experience of running or managing business enterprises professionally. Since FPO is a relatively new concept still taking roots, there was a lack of dedicated agencies to provide hand-holding and facilitating support to young FPOs. As a result, a number of FPOs become dormant, face losses, or are indirectly taken over and run by non-members, which defeat the very purpose of forming an FPO.

The challenges being faced by the FPO sector are discussed at different levels by different stakeholders who were supporting this concept and were eager for the growth and survival of FPOs. The discussions led to a need for a dedicated Facilitation Centre to exclusively work for the revival and strengthening of the FPO sector.
The broader objective of the Facilitation Center is to provide a catalytic platform for FPOs to nurture their objectives, to develop ecosystems for attaining operational efficiencies, and to enable these community-based organizations to become self-reliant. The Facilitation Centre would develop into a one-stop solution capable of meeting all the needs and services of the FPO sector.

We aim to provide the following services through the Facilitation center:

• Handholding support through technical assistance to FPO’s and Promoting Institutions.
• Socio-economic Analysis/Study of Potential areas for promotion of FPO’s.
• Facilitating policy and advocacy issues with different stakeholders to build a cohesive ecosystem in and around FPO’s.
• Development, maintenance, and update of Data Base on all aspects relating to FPO’s.
• Technical assistance for Legal and Statutory compliances
• Consultancy support for the preparation of Financial & Market plans
• Human Resource development – capacity building & training of promoters, farmers, and employees of FPO’s.
• Documentation and publication of best practices, Training Modules, Case Studies, Policy analysis, etc.
• Organizing seminars, workshops, stakeholder meets to create opportunities for networking with funding agencies, development institutions, Government organizations, retail entities etc.
• Mentoring programs of FPO’s to enable them to undertake their Mission and create & sustain the right energy within the organization.
• Creation of knowledge infrastructure/platform by enabling producer companies to learn from each other.
• Preparation of Audio/Visuals materials like posters, flip charts, wall hangings, etc. for sensitization and awareness creation at village level.
• Creation of networking opportunities with national and international level institutions to promote and develop FPO’s.

We have provided support and consultancy services to some of the renowned organizations like GIZ, JSLPS, BAIF, BRLF, Reliance Foundation, etc under our FPO Facilitation Centre.

Contact Details: Chetan Waghulade, 8275270439, chetanwaghulade@yuvamitra.org