updated: 12.05.08
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Economic Development of Poor Rural Communities Project

 

The project assists poor rural communities by providing training and financial support to local organizations for the development and management of sustainable savings and loan associations. The strategy focuses on empowering rural poor people so they can make their voices heard at local, state and national levels, and it supports development at local levels of sustainable private technical assistance services and financial institutions.

Among the project’s targets are extremely disadvantaged communities where the incidence of poverty is more than 90 per cent. To foster development of poor rural communities, the project works to improve people’s participation in civil organizations. Its objective is to improve the social and economic condition of rural poor people, and particularly the living conditions and civil status of women and of indigenous peoples.

The systematic training of participants and municipal and state officials is the project’s primary and continuing activity. Once a certain level of training is completed, voluntary and democratic formation of organizations is the next step. An important aspect of activities is identifying and training groups interested in organizing local financial institutions. A trust fund set up by the project with a commercial bank guarantees borrowing operations of savings and loan cooperatives.

 

Source: IFAD

In this section
Contact information

Mr Francisco Pichón
Country Programme Manager
IFAD
Via Paolo di Dono, 44
00142 Rome, Italy
Tel: +39 0654592128
Fax: +39 0654593128
f.pichon@ifad.org

Facts and figures

Total cost: US$24.4 million

IFAD loan: US$12.0 million

Duration: 1998-2007

Geographical area: 8 states in north-eastern, Andean and eastern Venezuela

Directly benefiting: 20,000 households

Status: closed

Partners

Government of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Andean Development Corporation (CAF)

Foundation for Training and Applied Research in Agrarian Reform (CIARA)