The Community-based maintenance began by educating and capacitating the partner communities that will be in-charge in ensuring the successful survival of the trees in the rainforestation. The capacity building program of the local partner community entailed teaching the participants with farming techniques, monitoring tools and organizational development skills to ensure a sustainable partnership and high survival of the trees planted.
Alongside the capacity building of the community partners is the opportunity to earn additional income, not only from the activities on restoration, but also facilitates other livelihood activities aligned with the objectives of the movement like seedling production. This substitutes the risk of the local community to engage or allow illegal activities that provides them extra income. Furthermore, the government, through the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, tapped people’s organizations to produce native tree seedlings in support of the National Greening Program. This contributed to a more stable and continued form of livelihood to the project’s community beneficiaries.
Partnership building with key stakeholders to ensure participatory approach in achieving a dignified Ecosystem and human well-being, by having a well restored forests. Farmers and forest dependent communities were assisted and capacitated because of their crucial role as the main actors on the ground. By providing the community proper restoration technology and promotion of biodiversity conservation and biodiversity friendly agriculture, the ecological benefits that need to be sustained has a higher probability of being achieved.
The selection of eligible community partner is also very vital to ensure the success of the restoration initiatives. With the realization that land claims are rampant in public lands, it is important to prioritize sites where perpetual protection can be ensured (i.e. protected areas). In fact, the social aspect of restoration greatly dictates its success or failure than the biophysical aspect as these (social factors) might bring unforeseen problems if not carefully considered. One must always remember that forests can naturally be restored by the natural processes, only human interventions (social) prohibit these natural process. It is also important to ensure that provision of support is aligned with the main activities of the community partners, and promotes the objectives of the movement.