In Meghalaya, Village Employment Council (VEC) is the designated body for implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and has been established in every village across the State. The Meglife Project shall utilize the VECs for implementing the project. A Village Project Implementation Committee (VPIC) as a sub-committee of the VEC shall be constituted with a mandate to guide and supervise the project implementation in the respective villages and to manage the project bank account which will be opened exclusively for the project.

This component includes planning and implementation of the core forestry operations.The major sub-components will be grass-root planning of forestry operations; implementation of forest working plans for individual forests units; planning and development of village level community nurseries and FED/ FD-ADC managed district level nurseries; soil and water conservation measures; fire management in fire-vulnerable forest areas; development of critical infrastructure for forest management.

Under this component, the Project aims at promoting inclusive community development and improving the livelihoods of people in selected villages. To achieve these objectives, the Project will need to actively involve women and youths in the Project, who have often been excluded from the decision-making processes of existing traditional community institutions, as well as introducing alternative income sources to people in selected villages and providing them with skill development, marketing, and financial supports.

Institutional strengthening will be a vital part of project implementation. This includes infrastructure required for project implementation, building capacity of personnel who implement and monitor the Project (capacity building of beneficiaries are discussed in Component 2), system of monitoring and evaluation, and publicity for the Project.