The study entitled Performance Evaluation of Local Non-Governmental Organizations' Involvement in Community Forestry Development was focused on comparative performance evaluation of local Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) acting in community forestry development in Kaski and Ramechhap districts.

District Forest Office (DFO), three NGOs, two community forest user groups (CFUGs) from each districts and Natural Resource Management Sector Assistance Programs (NARMSAP) from Kaski and Nepal Swiss Community Forestry Project (NSCFP) from Ramechhap were selected. Primary data were gathered from structured and semi-structured interviews, questionnaire survey, meetings and direct observation. The information obtained were crosschecked with each other. Secondary data were collected from published and unpublished documents. Such data were accumulated, classified, tabulated and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively using statistical tools like table, average, chart and diagram.

The result shows that encouragement to users for the establishment of enterprises, income generation activities and awareness creation among users' level on their roles, responsibilities and rights and improving good governance are strengths; project based rather than program based NGOs, irregular staffs in NGOs, little networking among NGOs and a little attention for sustainable forest management are weaknesses; more enterprises development and operation, marketing of forest products, organizational and institutional development and good governance are opportunities and present adverse political and security situation of the country, unclear vision and strategies of NGOs for sustainability and irregular follow-up of programs are threats to CFUGs due to NGOs involvement in community forestry development. The program implementation process of NARMSAP and NSCFP through NGOs in Kaski and Ramechhap district respectively is quite different. The users' perception towards NGOs services in CFUGs is fair. Coordination is still lacking among different social organizations involved in community forestry development in both the districts. Future scope of local NGOs' involvement in community forestry development is broad. Users seek NGOs' involvement beginning from Operational Plan (OP) preparation via forest and community management to enterprise development till marketing of forest products. The overall performance of local NGOs' involvement in community forestry development is satisfactory and their involvement is crucial in Kaski whereas it tends to be good and their involvement is important in Ramechhap.

Networking of social organizations involved in community forestry development, regular interactions between donor agencies, prioritization of local NGOs by GOs and donor agencies based on users' perception, regular meetings among different stakeholders, continuation of existing tours and trainings, self-implementation of feasible programs by CFUGs, prioritization of the programs demanded by CFUGs, taking CFUG as an entry point of social and community development, awareness creation at users' level on possible impacts before the commencement of programs are recommended for all concern stakeholders.