Winner of the Shell Livewire Best Business Plan Competition 2002
The Friends of Wildlife Rodrigues (FWR) is a local Rodriguan NGO, established in late 2001 that aims to help conserve Rodriguan plant biodiversity, by providing native plants for sale and restoration management consultancy services. FWR?s 8 members have worked as volunteers for over 1 year with Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF) Rodrigues Branch. In this time they have been trained in native plant propagation, forest restoration and community conservation techniques.

The primary objective of the proposed project is to aid the establishment of a financially self-sustaining, NGO enterprise in Rodrigues that will mass produce native plants for sale and provide consultancy services in planting and restoration management, both to the community and to private enterprises. The project will make native and endemic plants and support available to new sectors of the Rodrigues community who now wish to plant native species on local lands or to restore degraded lands. This project will therefore significantly increase the populations of native and endemic plants in Rodrigues, helping to ensure that sustainable supplies of useful and ornamental native plants are available to local communities, and also stabilising eroding soils and decreasing sedimentation of the Rodrigues lagoon.

Contacts between FWR and several bulk purchasers of native plants have been made possible through a planning grante and are already well advanced and the prospects for a steady long term demand for native plants and plant management consultancy services in Rodrigues are good.

Due to the active promotion of plant biodiversity conservation in Rodrigues in recent years an increasing demand has grown for native and endemic plants for use in village beautification, restoration of sites degraded by quarrying, school gardens, hotel and tourism site gardens, and private gardens. This demand, if unfulfilled from sustainable sources, could result in increased pressure on wild populations. The provision of native plants for land rehabilitation and landscaping will also prevent future problems that are caused by widespread planting of alien invasive and water-thirsty plant species.

None of the organisations currently involved in native/endemic plant propagation in Rodrigues are able to provide mass produced plants for this emerging market. Thus there is a clear niche for the development of a small business entrepreneurship to provide mass orders of native/endemic plants for sale, and to support site restoration/rehabilitation and management (both directly and through facilitation of community groups).
There are 2 main partners in this project. The first one is a private mining company, the United Basalt Products (UBP)with operations on the island of Rodrigues. UBP has signed an agreemenet whereas it will provide certain operating infrastructure, including a water tank and a supply of water, a building for a nursery and related offices, transport for plants, gravel and a planting site at Cascade Jean Louis on Rodrigues island and in return the NGO will have to rehabilitate areas degraded rock-mining activities of UBP. UBP will even remunerate the NGO for services rendered.

The second partner is AMSCO, the African Management Services Company, a UNDP and International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group. AMSCO is specialized in the supply of managers for the private sector who are qualified and experienced in the field of rehabilitation and expansion of viable African companies and in the field of the training of African staff. AMSCO will provide a manager for the period of 12 months whose skills best fit the profile agreed upon with the GEF Small Grants Programme and FWR ? the managers salary, travel expenses and insurance will be covered. This contribution has been estimated at US $ 35,000.