The document outlines a framework for empowering marginalized actors in market systems to enable their engagement with more powerful entities. It includes guidelines for building market literacy, negotiation skills, and representation ability among marginalized groups, as well as strategies for ensuring productive communication between different actors. Additional resources, training materials, and case studies are provided to aid practitioners in this empowerment process.

1. Step 4: Empowering
Marginalised Actors
BACK TO MAP

2. 4 Empowering Marginalised Actors Summary
Empowering Marginalised Actors
provides guidance on how to build the
skills of actors who start from a point of
marginalisation so that they can engage
proactively with more powerful and
market savvy actors.

3. 4 Empowering Marginalised Actors Rationale
The empowering marginalised actors stage
will allow you to:
• Prepare marginalised actors to make the PMSD
process work for them
• Build market literacy, dialogue and negotiation and
representation and mobilisation skills in
marginalised actors
• Help representatives of marginalised actors to
represent the interests of their peers effectively in
the PMSD process
• Orient more powerful actors to communicate
productively and effectively with marginalised actors

4. 4 Empowering Marginalised Actors Top Tips
• Focus on developing market literacy, and skills for
representation, mobilisation, dialogue and
negotiation
• Be very clear about how you define “marginalised”
• Make time to analyse who the marginalised actors
within the system actually are
• It is impossible to empower every actor; instead,
engage representatives who can inform and
mobilise their peers
• Keep in mind that you may also need to provide
guidance to more powerful actors on how to work
productively with marginalised actors

5. 4 Empowering Marginalised Actors Guidelines
Download a detailed set of notes describing
our past experiences, recommendations and
action points on how to build the skills of
marginalised actors so that they can engage
proactively with more powerful and market
savvy actors
• Step 4 Guidelines – Empowering Marginalised Actors

6. 4 Empowering Marginalised Actors Training
Before you start training practitioners
on how to facilitate workshops, make
sure you have covered the Facilitation Skills
and Attitudes module.
This module enables participants to be more
confident and competent in putting the tools
and principles of PMSD into practice.
• Facilitation Skills Training Materials – Facilitator Guide
• Facilitation Skills Training Materials – Slides

7. 4 Empowering Marginalised Actors Training
Download training materials that can be used
in workshops to train practitioners in how to
empower marginalised actors, through games,
exercises and discussions.
• Step 4 Training Materials – Facilitator Guide
• Step 4 Training Materials – Slides

8. 4 Empowering Marginalised Actors Case Studies
Read case studies of how other projects have
empowered market actors:
• Young Rural Entrepreneurs in Peru
• Making Markets Work in Bangladesh

9. 4 Empowering Marginalised Actors Further Resources
• UNIDO - Pro-Poor Value Chain Development
Includes a tool to investigate how the value chain affects poor
people in the value chain, and the impact of gender based
constraints
• Pathways Out Of Poverty toolkit
Provides a tool for bringing the poorest actors to a point of
empowerment
• Grameen Shakti’s Value Chain Identification for
the poorest Toolkit
Further guidance on selecting value chains that have the
maximum potential to engage and positively impact very poor
populations.
• Center for Creative Leadership
Giving effective feedback: The Situation + Behaviour + Impact
(SBI) model

10. 4 Empowering Marginalised Actors The Roadmap
1 Market System Selection
2 Preliminary Mapping and Analysis
3 Strategic Design and Planning
4 Empowering Marginalised Actors
5 Engaging Key Actors
6 Participatory Market Mapping
7 Participatory Planning
8 Facilitating Change
9 Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
10 Communicating Evidence for Uptake