Enhancing Pastoralist Research and Development Alternatives (EPaRDA) is a local NGO that is a pioneer organization to initiate and implement multi-sector development projects in predominantly pastoral and agro-pastoral communities. For more than two decades, EPaRDA has been working to address development needs through designing and implementing more than 60 projects that are of high priority, such as strengthening household livelihoods, improving water availability, improving access and utilization of health services and education, capacity building and skills transfer, natural resource management, emergency/humanitarian support, gender mainstreaming and women empowerment, and inclusion of persons with disabilities and HIV/AIDS.

Development policies and approaches have been marginalizing the pastoral livelihood system for a long time. EPaRDA has been one of the leading organizations advocating for the integration of pastoralists, minority communities, and marginalized groups at policy levels, cascading to development actions, and also ensuring inclusive development.

More importantly, EPaRDA has a firm stand on research and piloting for model projects among the hard-to-reach pastoral communities in light of the complexity of socio-cultural factors and the unpredictability of disaster risks, conflicts, and other calamities. In pursuit of this, EPaRDA has thus consistently engaged in action-oriented research and the practice of model approaches, from which it was able to document sufficient knowledge and practical lessons on selected thematic issues, including resource inventory and mapping, agronomy, socio-economic condition, ethno-veterinary, camel adaptability trials, dry meat marketing, sorghum transplantation, peacebuilding, rehabilitation for post-conflict trauma, and documentation of worthwhile practices.