Mercy Corps believes that “in a market-development approach, facilitation seeks to catalyze a market system (all the elements of the market) while remaining outside that market system.”
USAID agrees and adds that “market facilitators work to stimulate markets to evolve in a way that increasingly involves and benefits both the producers and the businesses without becoming a part of the market themselves. They seek to catalyze ongoing pro-poor market improvement, while keeping ownership firmly among market actors
and avoiding dependency”.
To build resilience of pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, and people transitioning-out-of-pastoralism (TOPs) of Ethiopia’s dry-land communities, Mercy Corps’ Pastoral Areas Resilience Improvement Through Market Expansion (PRIME) project strengthens the systems within which vulnerable households operate. The project does so using a facilitative approach, by integrating activities, and appropriate "push-pull" strategies.