Program Summary

Our Community-driven Development project is based on community participation and relies on community decision making throughout the entire process.  Communities come together and determine problems in their community and develop solutions in the form of project proposals.  These project proposals are then presented to the county poverty alleviation officer with an application for funding.  Plan provides assistance but does not make decisions for communities; it is important that these communities collectively determine their own needs.

Why we are doing it?

There are many villages and communities in rural China where the majority of the community is living in poverty.  Many of these communities have the capacity to improve their situation if they work together to create solutions that suit all community members.  Best practice cases of community development show that community participation and involvement is the best way to achieve sustainable improvement. An example of the importance and success of community driven development can be seen in Chengiahe village, located in the north of Baishui County, Shaanxi Province. Chengjiahe is more than 50 km from the county centre and there are 36 households in the village. The Chengjiahe community took part in the CDD project.  During the priority ranking stage of working out their community needs all the people including the women in the village agreed to build a road.  A road was determined to be the most important priority because with a road they could travel out of the village to the county centre easily to sell apples at a better price. The Chengjiahe community prepared a proposal, asked for technical support from the traffic bureau, selected a contractor based on quotes, contributed to the labour and appointed staff to conduct their own monitoring of the project. All the work was finished before the apple harvest.  In fall 2007, due to the construction of the road, they sold their apples at a good price and received almost 100 per cent more profit than the season before.

Our Approach

The communities decide! Community improvement projects are decided and completed by the villagers.  The community facilitator offers assistance to the community during the process, but cannot make decisions for the community.  This encourages the communities to take control and increase their own capacity at the same time.

Program GoalsLong term objective

·   To establish a sustainable mechanism for community self-organisation, self-management and self-development through stimulating potential social capital within the community and improving local governance.

·   To develop and establish a CDD project operation and management model;

Specific objective

·   To promote small-scale infrastructure and improve public services for 60 poor communities;

·   To expand income-increase opportunities for farmers through granting small loans to poor farmers and establishing self-managed Community Development Fund for rural communities

·   To improve the environment of project communities and enhance capacity of communities for natural resources management

Program Activities

A typical timeline of a project in a village can be divided into the following steps: community mobilisation and project implementation. Community mobilisation includes information dissemination, community-based organisation creation and an evaluation of community mobilisation. After the community mobilisation stage the community begins the implementing the project: first, community problems are identified, then ranked in order of priority, solutions to problems are selected and the community presents a project proposal and an application for funds. Once the community receives funding the project is carried out along side monitoring and evaluation.

Program Partners

Our partners in the Community Driven Development project include the Foreign Capital Program Management Center of the State Council Poverty Reduction Leading Group of China and provincial-level and county-level Foreign Capital Program Management Centres.

Future of the Program

In the fiscal year 2008 we will continue to work on Plan China’s first Community Driven Development Project in Baishui County, Shaanxi Province. We will then share experiences and extend the project to Pucheng and Yulin Counties, Shaanxi Province.

Impact

In the fiscal year 2007 Plan China’ s Community Driven Development project allowed 15 villages to complete infrastructure projects, 12 villages to set-up and utilise community development fund projects and 15 villages to conduct habitat improvement projects.In one year more than 80 roads were built and 10 water systems were constructed.