1. Europe and Central Asia: Scaling Up Community Driven Developmentby
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:

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
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.