Europe and Central Asia: Scaling Up Community Driven Development

1. Europe and Central Asia:Scaling Up Community Driven Development by Alexandre Marc & Evelin Lehis ECSSD Social Development Unit ECSSD Retreat April 16, 2002

2. Europe and Central Asia:Scaling Up Community Driven Development • What is CDD? • Why CDD? • ECA: Towards an Operational Approach to CDD • ECA: Internal Capacity Building • Lessons Learned: Main Challenges and Issues • Sources:ECCSD El. Doc. Lib. under the ‘CDD’ category at: http://wbln1023.worldbank.org/ECS/ECSSD/SecDocLib.nsf/?OpenDatabase http://essd.worldbank.org/CDDWk2000.nsf/Gweb/Home http://www.worldbank.org/participation/CDD.htm

3. What is CDD? • CDD – the exercise of community control over decisions and resources directed at poverty reduction and development. • CDD– “way of doing business” for services where community groups can have comparative advantage.

4. Why CDD? • Past experience – traditional centralized approaches do not always work. • Expectations for poverty reduction: • Complement market and public sector activities • Make services more demand-responsive and enhance sustainability • Take poverty reduction to scale • Make development more inclusive • Empower people, build social capital

5. ECA: Towards an Operational Approach to CDD • Regional Strategy: • Integrate CDD in institutional reform and decentralization. • Develop new CDD operations. • Build capacity within the Bank. • Steps to Scale Up Operations: • Pilot country strategies: Albania, Armenia, Romania, Russia, and Central Asia. • Norwegian TF support for small grants in IDA countries. • Steps to Build Regional Capacity: • “CDD in ECA” Brown Bag Lunches. • Regional workshop for staff and clients in Tirana, May 27-29. • Major studies: Rural CDD and CDD Context in Central Asia.

6. ECA: Internal Capacity Building“CDD in ECA” Brown Bag Lunches • 11 BBLs on different thematic areas: “Scaling up CDD in ECA: Prospects and Challenges”, Rural Water and Sanitation, Social Investment Funds, Irrigation, Microcredit, Natural Resource Management, Procurement, Decentralization, Cultural Heritage, Urban Development, and Education. • Main Challenges & Issues: • Policy Challenges • Economic Issues • Institutional and Capacity Issues • Social Challenges • Sustainability

7. Lessons Learned:Main Challenges & Issues • Policy Challenges • Creating an enabling macro environment, including: • Legal reform to create the space and establish the rules for community-based organizations to operate in. • Decentralization and assurance of complementarity between CDD projects and the government’s decentralization program. • Economic Challenges • Understanding and establishing incentives’ structures for collective action. • Establishing a community contribution system that is sufficiently flexible and enforceable.

8. Lessons Learned:Main Challenges & Issues, cont. • Institutional/Organizational and Capacity Issues • Clear delineation of roles and responsibilities between central and regional/local government. • Suitable institutional arrangements, e.g. transfer mechanisms, rules, requirements • The need to avoid political pressures. • Low administrative capacity and lack of experience both on community and regional/local government level. • Weak community-based organizations and lack of experience at the local government and community levels. • Internal Bank matters. • Social Challenges • How to create responsiveness, partnership and trust, and sense of ownership?

9. Lessons Learned:Main Challenges & Issues, cont. • Sustainability • Different forms, e.g.: • Managing and operating infrastructure beyond the project cycle. • Financial sustainability, securing and raising funds beyond the project cycle to support activities. • Maintaining and utilizing new community capacity/skills created during the project. • Sustainability is an overarching concern and it is likely that reasons for this are common across the board as well as country and context specific.