Socioeconomic Goals For TerraFund Projects

This article explains how to set goals for jobs to be created, volunteers to be engaged, and livelihood beneficiaries in your project. Please review each definition carefully and ensure the numbers for each category are entered separately and accurately.

TerraFund partners are not just restoring land and ecosystems. They are also advancing socioeconomic objectives and supporting local economies by providing employment and bolstering livelihoods. 

How to Distinguish Between People Employed, Volunteers, and Direct and Indirect Beneficiaries of these Livelihood Initiatives 

TerraFund aims to understand how a range of stakeholders are affected by or influenced by TerraFund investments and how to best distinguish between these groups. The below figure illustrates the different levels of engagement of many project stakeholders.

The concentric circles represent different layers of beneficiaries of TerraFund investments. The innermost circle represents TerraFund champions who have received funds for restoration purposes as well as the people employed by the project to achieve restoration goals, and people volunteering directing for the organization. This layer represents People Employed and Volunteers. 

The second layer includes individuals directly benefiting from TerraFund funds, such as local community members receiving tree seedlings or fruit trees, or a local business the project is supporting. These individuals are counted as direct beneficiaries. Please provided details to explain all of the benefits your project aims to provide and explain the basis for the figures you provide.  

The third layer includes second-level beneficiaries, namely members of the households or communities of individuals who will benefit directly from the project, beneficiaries experiencing indirect benefits from the restoration efforts, such as improved soil quality, water availability, and air quality. Champions are free to provide numbers in their own calculations but are expected to share how they calculated the numbers provided. 

TerraFund prioritizes accuracy and the ability to verify the information within its database rather than simply focusing on the number of people engaged. TerraFund therefore prioritizes quality over quantity – we would rather have projects report accurate numbers than inflated estimates. 

Definition of a Job

A “job” is defined as a set of tasks and duties performed by one person aged 18 or over in exchange for pay, profit, or benefit for at least one hour during a given week. Common jobs for restoration projects include trainers, nursery managers, seed collectors, tree planters, monitoring and maintenance staff, and administrative staff, along with other roles. 

For the goals, champions are to provide the number of people who they target to employ as part of the project over the course of implementation. The target indicated should be broken down by gender [male, female, non-binary] and by age [youth (18-35), non-youth (over 35)]. In this tally, include all proposed full-time and part-time jobs that would be created directly by this project and that your organization would pay for. 

Full-time jobs: Number of individuals working full-time jobs (35 or more hours) on the project per week with a consistent role that involves daily engagement for at least 3 months of the reporting period, disaggregated by gender and age group

Part-time: Number of individuals working part-time jobs (less than 35 hours) on the project per week. These jobs are categorized into 2 based on the period of engagement; part-time jobs and short-term/seasonal/casual jobs.

1. Part-time jobs: Number of individuals working part-time jobs (less than 35 hours) on the project per week with a consistent role that involves frequent engagement for at least 3 months of the last reporting period disaggregated by gender identity and age group.
2. Short-term/Seasonal/Casual jobs: Number of individuals working periodically on the project for less than 3 months, typically involved in tasks that take a few days, or during high engagement seasons such as planting seasons. These include jobs that involve recurring engagement at the same time in different months but for a short duration ranging from a few days to a few weeks, e.g. people engaged to plant for 3 days. People engaged in this type of jobs are paid per day for days worked.

Do not include volunteers or project beneficiaries that are not paid directly by your organization. Note that TerraMatch does not support projects that directly employ people under 18 years of age.

Volunteers

In this section, you will provide the number of volunteers that your project aims to engage. 

A volunteer is an individual that freely dedicates their time to the project because they see value in doing so, but does not receive payment for their work. For example, they may volunteer their time because of a personal interest in environmental causes, or because they believe restoration efforts will benefit their community, or as part of their educational pursuits. Volunteers must work directly on the project. Paid workers or beneficiaries who do not dedicate their time to the project are not considered volunteers.  

Each volunteer should be counted only once during the project’s lifecycle, and the target should reflect this. Do not count anyone in this tally that is included in the “jobs” or “beneficiaries” categories.