This is Ms. Daw Mya Aye, she lives in Ka Ma Nin village. She was a volunteer in the village development supporting committee in Chaungzon.

The village consists of different ethnicities and religions such as Mon, Bamar, Kayain, Shan, Christians and Muslims. ‘I knew that NCDDP emphasizes to give all people the same opportunity to participate in the development activities. Therefore, our village development supporting committee tried to involve the whole local community in the project implementation.’

 

 

Involving Citizens in Decision Making by strengthening local government

Featured Project

Myanmar, National Community Driven Development Project

 

The objective of NCDDP is to support and enable poor rural communities to benefit from improved communication and access to local and government services.

 

We do this by providing institutional support and technical assistance to the township offices of the Department of Rural Development of Chaungzon, Bilin and Paung townships in Mon State, Shwegyin township in Bago Region and Tanintharyi township in Tanintharyi Region. Furthermore, we provide technical assistance to the village and village tract level to familiarise communities with participatory approaches in the process of establishing inclusive village and village tract project development committees.

 

At the beginning they encountered some difficulties because not the whole community, such as Muslims and Christians, were willing to come to the Buddhist monastery for community meetings. Meetings at the local school were only possible during school holidays. Therefore, the committee decided, after consultations, a village community hall had to be constructed for the first cycle of the NCDD programme, so everyone would feel welcome during the community meetings.  The village owned some land and they were able to construct a community hall. Soon it appeared that more people felt involved and joined community meetings because the community hall was not assigned to a certain religion or ethnicity.

 

Expected and intermediary results of the project are:

• Training plans have been developed and are being implemented for all villages within the 5 townships;
• 5 township-specific information dissemination and outreach strategies have been developed and are leading the projects;
• 165 community and technical facilitators have been or will be trained on the community project cycle, gender, social accountability and grievance handling, financial management, procurement, and M&E;
• All technical facilitators were or will be trained on sub-project technical design, cost estimation, social safeguards implementation, and construction supervision and management;
• In each townships village tract , village committees and village volunteers were trained on the community project cycle, gender, social accountability and grievance handling, financial management, procurement, M&E, sub-project technical design, cost estimation, social safeguards implementation, and construction management and supervision;
• All villages within the 5 townships developed Village Tract Development Plans (VTDPs) in cycle 1 of the programme;
• The village tract sub-committees were trained on finance;
• Once these VDPs have been established, and with the support of the project, villages implement the projects – chosen by their community – which include roads, drainages, community buildings, generators, public lighting ea.
• Hereafter, each of the 5 townships complete social audits in the village tracts during the four cycles of the programme.