The first step is to engage local leaders, traditional authorities, and respected community members. By involving them from the start, the project gains trust and ensures alignment with community values. These leaders promote community buy-in and support for FFS, reinforcing the importance of restoration activities and encouraging widespread participation. This step ensures that the lead farmers chosen are acceptable by the entire community.

A robust monitoring mechanism of the process needs to be put in place. Technical staff need to ensure that they engage with communities to explore whether there are challenges and how they can address them. During these monitoring events, communities also share their experiences.
This is part of the continuous learning cycle to improve where necessary. New techniques are also shared during these monitoring events.

This building block aims at sustaining communities with day-to-day survival options. As communities engage in restoration work, they need to engage in compensatory and beneficial economic activities as individuals or groups. The communities identified livelihoods of their choice. In this project, the communities chose goat and chicken rearing, mushroom growing and bee-keeping. So far, the project has supported them with chicken and goat rearing and bee-keeping.  The benefits from these livelihoods are used to meet household needs such as agricultural inputs, clothing and school fees for children.

In order to achieve sustainability, the communities were allowed to factor in their traditional knowledge and skills on how to concretize the new working modalities. The communities added another set of working groups from various villages. The working groups were shared a portion of the reserve to manage. This made the work of the overall committee easy as it turned into a monitoring committee. The groups make their own plans (work plans) for various activities such as patrolling, making of firebreaks etc. 

The first step is to convene all the forest block committees, local leaders and rural communities in general. These meetings focus on addressing issues that have negatively affected the communities as a result of the deforested reserve. This is followed by the establishment of new committees to oversee the new management plans. 

To reduce community reliance on deforestation activities, the project introduced livelihood diversification options, including irrigation farming, beekeeping, banana and pineapple production, goat and chicken rearing, and mushroom cultivation. These activities provide sustainable income alternatives that align with the conservation goals of Mvai Forest Reserve. Local farmers are trained in small-scale irrigation and sustainable agriculture techniques to improve productivity without expanding farmland and so far four irrigation schemes have been developed to enable crop production three times a year. The diversification of livelihoods aims to create a sustainable income base for the community, reducing the need for charcoal production and forest exploitation. These initiatives are at varying stages of implementation, with some fully operational, such as banana and pineapple farming, while others, like mushroom production and fish farming will be operational by March 2025.

The Entarara CFA established three user groups—beekeeping, nursery planting, and ecotourism—to support alternative livelihoods and reduce pressure on forest resources. The beekeeping group aims to produce honey, providing both income and pollination services within the forest. The nursery group focuses on growing indigenous and fruit trees for sale, with a target of 100,000 seedlings annually, supporting reforestation and providing income. The ecotourism group plans to fundraise for forest fencing, promote awareness, and develop tourism-friendly amenities like picnic sites and campsites. These groups offer diverse livelihood options that are ecologically sustainable and economically beneficial, fostering community commitment to forest conservation.

The formation of the Entarara Community Forest Association (CFA) marked a critical step in managing and conserving the forest through community engagement. WWF facilitated discussions with the seven nearby villages on the benefits of creating a CFA to allow legal and organized community involvement in forest management. By 2023, the CFA was officially formed, with a governance structure and a participatory forest management plan (PFMP) developed in collaboration with the Kenya Forest Service and Kajiado County. The CFA serves as the primary organization responsible for implementing restoration, protection, and community-led activities in the forest. It plays an essential role in mobilizing community members, organizing user groups, and ensuring that forest resources are managed sustainably, offering an inclusive platform for local voices and promoting ownership.

In 2020, efforts to restore Entarara Forest included a focus on removing invasive plant species, specifically lantana camara, which had spread throughout the area. The County government and CFA, with support from the WWF initiated invasive plant removal as part of its commitment to rehabilitate the degraded areas in the forest. The invasive species removal aimed to improve the ecological health of the forest by allowing native species to re-establish and enhancing habitat quality that  better supports ecosystem services. To support this, the County government supports local residents  to patrol and secure the forest, preventing re-encroachment. This early restoration activity coupled with re-afforestation was essential for creating the right conditions for forest regeneration and  impetus for future reforestation efforts.