Making a difference in Asia and the Pacific

 

IFAD


Special issue

Achieving impact – highlights from the field

In this issue


Reviewing IFAD’s performance in Asia and the Pacific

IFADIFAD’s Asia and the Pacific Division, in collaboration with the Government of Thailand and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) Regional Bureau for Asia, is holding an Annual Performance Review Workshop in Bangkok from 20 to 23 June 2006.

A total of 110 participants are attending this year's event, representing 55 ongoing projects from throughout the region. Participants include representatives from governments, country development partners, civil society, regional partners and cooperating institutions, and IFAD staff. The workshop gives participants an exciting opportunity to discuss important project design and implementation issues, new IFAD initiatives in the region and various thematic areas. Through documentation and exchange of experiences and ideas, the workshop is also promoting learning and partnership across the regional programmes. The overall goal of this event is to enhance the implementation of IFAD-assisted development interventions and boost their impact on rural poverty reduction throughout the region.

In the context of the performance review, this newsletter highlights important results related to IFAD’s strategic objectives that the Asia and the Pacific Division has achieved to date. It also shares some of the good practices that led to these achievements and that are related to targeting, building the capacity of rural poor people and their organizations, increasing access to financial services and markets, and improving access to natural resources and technology. This newsletter also offers examples of how IFAD is contributing to more effective institutions in the region through improved pro-poor policy dialogue, learning and innovation.

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IFAD’s strategic focus in Asia and the Pacific

IFADThe Millennium Development Goals guide IFAD’s work, as reflected in its Strategic Framework for 2002-2006. The framework’s strategic objectives are:

  • strengthening the capacity of rural poor people and their organizations
  • improving equitable access to productive natural resources and technology
  • increasing access to financial services and markets

In pursuing these objectives, IFAD addresses the needs of rural poor people by concentrating its activities on geographic areas with high concentrations of poor people with special vulnerabilities. The Regional Strategy for Asia and the Pacific, which defines and establishes the preliminary broad targeting framework for all IFAD interventions in the region, prescribes the general geographical focus of all operations on less-favoured areas, such as remote uplands and mountains, marginal coastal areas and erratically watered drylands. The strategy also prescribes the broad-spectrum socio-economic focus of programmes and projects on women and marginalized minorities, such as indigenous peoples and other excluded groups.

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Targeting rural poor people

IFADThe Asia and the Pacific Division has just completed a self-assessment of its regional strategy. During this exercise, the division sought to answer two essential questions:

  • Is IFAD doing the right thing in Asia and the Pacific to fight rural poverty?
  • Is it doing it in the right way?

Among others things, the self-assessment team looked at various targeting instruments that are used across projects to reach out to the intended target groups – poor rural producers, indigenous peoples, women and other marginal groups. 

Targeting the right population in the right area is an important precondition to maximize the chances of having a real impact on poverty in an efficient manner. The team found that most IFAD projects in the region use a narrow geographic targeting approach whereby, within a specific geographic area, selected villages or other low level administrative entities are targeted. One of the specific targeting instruments that IFAD uses in the region is Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping developed by the World Food Programme (WFP). The mechanism provides information such as food security within a particular country, risks faced by particular groups and household livelihood strategies. IFAD uses this instrument in China to select poor townships within the dedicated project target area in order to focus its interventions.

Because poor rural households are the primary target group of IFAD’s interventions, specific targeting instruments need to be used to make sure that projects reach the intended participants and avoid elite capture. One such instrument is the participatory village/commune development plan exercise, which has been used by IFAD in China, Mongolia and Viet Nam. This exercise involves the preparation of village development plans (or commune development plans in Viet Nam) through a participatory process that involves the whole village. The plans are required to list all activities to be undertaken in the context of the project and to specify, for each identified activity, the number of participants, the characteristics of households that will benefit, and the justification for their selection. With this type of targeting mechanism, investment priorities and their ultimate beneficiaries are agreed upon at the same time.

Identification based on prescribed criteria is a targeting approach adopted by the Microfinance for Marginal and Small Farmers Project in Bangladesh. The project has suggested the use of a system whereby farmers have to meet the following criteria in order to benefit from project activities:

  • land holding (minimum of 0.5 acre owned or 1 acre rented – maximum of 2.5 acres owned or 5 acres rented)
  • principal occupation of household head (should be in crops, horticulture, livestock, fisheries or agrobusiness)
  • poverty criteria (to be defined by the partner organization)

In many poor countries, women do most of the farm work and they also fetch water, collect firewood, prepare meals and care for children and sick relatives. This leaves them with very little time to participate in project activities. Women are also less likely than men to get an education. As a consequence, they are underrepresented in grass-roots organizations and often have little or no say in decisions that affect their lives.

IFAD’s programmes and projects across the region have therefore developed some specific mechanisms to ensure that women benefit from their activities. The mechanism most often used is to focus on providing benefits that are expected to meet women’s specific needs, such as drinking water supply schemes and health infrastructure. It is also vital to ensure that agricultural extension or on-farm demonstration topics reflect the needs and constraints of women farmers. Other approaches include empowering women through literacy training and general education, promoting their participation in grass-roots organizations, raising awareness on gender issues among project staff (usually by filling project positions with women) or project partners, and introducing time-saving technologies.


Strengthening the capacity of rural poor people and their organizations

IFADIFAD recognizes that lack of strong social organization makes it difficult for poor people to effectively negotiate the issues that affect their well-being, to exploit potential opportunities within their communities, and to develop links with external partners. The Asia and the Pacific Division helps to build individual and collective capabilities so that rural poor men and women can gain access to economic opportunities, basic social services and infrastructure.

Developing human assets

Human assets such as improved health, formal education and technical knowledge are key to improving rural poor people’s quality of life and they also reduce other measures of poverty and deprivation. Women’s education is particularly important in improving child health. The Asia and the Pacific Division recognizes the close connection between the education of women and eliminating some of the worst expressions of poverty, such as high infant and child mortality and morbidity rates.

The December 2005 mid-term review of the West Guangxi Poverty Alleviation Project in China reported that “the construction of classrooms has been completed with excellent quality”. Training under the primary education sub-component, including literacy training for adults, helped to improve school attendance rates and the quality of education in remote areas. The review also reported that the construction of clinics and the improvement of health facilities by the project increased their use and contributed to their financial sustainability. The recent introduction of a government medical insurance scheme that contributes 60 per cent of medical expenses also contributed to this success.

The June 2005 country programme evaluation reported that under the Aquaculture Development Project in Bangladesh, “access to health and education services had improved as a result of improved roads and transport”. It also reported that in the Agricultural Diversification and Intensification Project, also in Bangladesh, “40 per cent of beneficiaries increased their access to drinking water through income increases that allowed them to acquire their own tubewells”.

The recent mid-term review mission to the Oudomxai Community Initiative Support Project in Lao People’s Democratic Republic found that there was a great demand for additional school dormitories that were constructed by the project. These dormitories are fundamental to school attendance because they enable many girls and boys from distant villages to attend school. However, the mission also found that it is difficult to find school teachers for areas as remote as the one where the project is located. It therefore recommended that the project should train a few young women in each village, especially from ethnic minorities, to become teachers themselves.

Building social capital and empowerment

Social capital refers to social bonds and norms, relations of trust and networks that provide an important ground for achieving sustainability in rural development initiatives. Because it lowers the costs of working together, social capital facilitates cooperation. Poor people have the confidence to invest in collective activities, knowing that others will also do so. Such improved linkages between poor people and between poor people’s organizations result in greater empowerment. Once they are empowered, poor people’s capacity to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes increases. Building social capital and empowerment are at the centre of IFAD’s interventions in Asia and the Pacific. Examples include creation and strengthening of poor people’s organizations, such as self-help groups, farmer and village-level organizations, and linking such organizations to the private sector.

During three years of implementation of the Jharkhand-Chattisgarh Tribal Development Programme in India, both NGOs and programme staff directed their efforts at empowerment and capacity-building in the targeted communities. In villages where self-help groups are fully functional, there is now evidence of decreasing dependency on money lenders, increasing group self-confidence in demanding their rights for government services, and increasing representation in statutory bodies. In some villages, villagers themselves have initiated impressive community work, such as building community halls and wells, and constructing and repairing canals. Food-for-work motivated these villagers, who contributed both labour and construction materials. This also demonstrates a growing sense of ownership of programme activities in some villages.

In Viet Nam, when the Ha Tinh Rural Development Project started work, project and provincial authorities recognized the need for capacity-building at all levels. As part of its work to enfranchise and empower people, the project introduced techniques for participatory rural appraisal, community participation and commune and village-level organization. Following this, a suite of tools were integrated into the provincial government system and are now being used in other governmental programmes.

The Matale Regional Economic Advancement Project in Sri Lanka, has been assisting the Government of Sri Lanka to convert farmer producer groups into companies and to help them form strategic partnerships with large companies. The project provides extensive training and follow-up support to interested groups. IFAD recommended that an ‘umbrella’ limited liability company should be created with advanced grass-roots companies, major companies with interest in the Matale district and the Government of Sri Lanka as shareholders. This partnership between farmers and large companies significantly empowers the farmers because it increases their bargaining power when negotiating contractual arrangements with large companies.

Addressing unequal power gender relations

IFAD’s commitment to gender equality and the empowerment of rural poor women was strengthened by the approval of the Gender Plan of Action 2003-2006 in April 2003. Most projects designed during the reporting period reflect IFAD’s three-pronged gender approach, which combines economic empowerment, strengthening of women’s decision-making roles, and measures to improve their well-being.

The December 2005 mid-term review of the West Guangxi Poverty Alleviation Project in China recognized the important role of women in the context of the heavy male emigration from the project area, leaving many households headed solely by women. Under these circumstances, the project designed some activities operated by and specifically for women, such as prenatal care, income-generation skills training and microcredit activities. The project also constructed biogas pits which brought cooking energy to 22,649 households, saving women about two to three hours work collecting fuelwood every day.

In commenting on the Smallholder Agricultural Improvement Project in Bangladesh, the country programme evaluation reported that “the programme had a significant impact on gender that constituted much of its impact on the creation of social capital”. The evaluation also reported that “through microfinance activities, IFAD projects have contributed to a gradual transformation of rural life in terms of women’s own self-image, their relationships with others and the recognition accorded to them as economic actors by the community at large”.

Under the Rural Women’s Development and Empowerment Project in India, which targeted only women, women have taken up microenterprise activities on a large scale, both individually and in groups. As of June 2005, the project had established more than 17,600 self-help groups (against the original target of 7,400) with a membership of 240,000 women, 79 per cent of whom are from vulnerable populations. Literacy among members improved from 14 to 40 per cent. The recent impact evaluation study found that more than 90 per cent of members freely articulated their opinions, needs and suggestions on the project and showed growing self-confidence. The average annual income of women engaged in income-earning activities and microenterprise development has almost doubled. However, the formation of self-help groups has been less successful in Bangladesh and Pakistan. While the process of group formation is sound in the Sunamganj Community-Based Resource Management Project in Bangladesh and the Barani Village Development Project in Pakistan, there are concerns about the quality of social mobilization and about dominance of self-help groups by stronger members of the community.


Increasing access to financial services and markets

In their efforts to raise agricultural productivity, and to diversify and increase their incomes, poor people need investment credit and working capital. Because the amounts involved are small and poor people lack collateral, banks are usually not interested in lending to them. IFAD’s assistance therefore also focuses on the development of professional and responsive rural finance institutions with a strong emphasis on providing credit and encouraging savings.

Access to financial services

IFAD recognizes that access to financial assets, predominantly through microfinance, plays a key role not only in employment generation for poor people, but also as an instrument for protecting them against external shocks such as economic crises, natural disasters or man-made calamities. It is one of the main instruments used in IFAD-supported interventions to reduce rural poverty and empower rural poor people – women in particular.

The project completion review of the Agricultural Diversification and Intensification Project in Bangladesh reports that in the 6,200 groups formed by the project, over 90 per cent of group members were women. These group members received microfinance services and training in a range of livelihood activities, including crop and livestock production technology. The project impact evaluation found that access to credit and technical support had significant impact on women, with 45 per cent buying or leasing land, 40 per cent purchasing livestock, 16 per cent purchasing poultry and 29 per cent setting up small businesses. Traditional norms of prestige and status were overturned; 80 per cent of women were using credit for enterprises they operated themselves, their status and self-confidence improved greatly, in most cases women were controlling their own money and assets, and domestic violence decreased. Up to 50 per cent of group members were buying land in their own name, although the proportion of members purchasing land varied considerably from group to group. The impact survey confirmed that women’s status at the household level had improved markedly, with an increase in participation in household decision-making from 35 to 85 per cent of women group members, and an increase in participation in financial management decisions from 30 to 89 per cent of group members.

The project status report for the National Microfinance Support Programme in India says that the growth in microfinance in the southern states has been phenomenal, with some of the large partner microfinance institutions registering growth rates in their loan portfolios of 100 to 300 per cent since the start of the programme. Through the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), the programme services microfinance institutions in different parts of the country. Nearly 90 per cent of microfinance activities are concentrated in the more developed southern and western regions and 11 per cent in the north-east. The programme contributed significantly to the scaling up of four of the top microfinance institutions and some medium-sized microfinance institutions in underserved regions of India. According to the October 2005 supervision report, the programme is reaching 1.3 million clients, the majority of whom are women who do not have access to formal banking services.

 

Case study

Small-scale livestock intervention is bringing changes in poor women’s lives in Bangladesh

With the financial assistance of IFAD, the Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) has started implementing the Microfinance and Technical Support Project in 13 districts in the south and northeast of Bangladesh. The goal of the project is to improve the livelihoods and food security of 276,000 poor households and to empower women by helping them adopt sustainable income-generating activities using improved techniques to raise livestock.

At least 25 per cent of the project’s target group are people who earn less than US$1 a day. To date, more than 46,000 such people have been identified, and more than 19,000 of them have received about US$1.5 million in the form of credit for the implementation of income-generating activities. About 6,300 project participants have received training and engaged in the livestock activities.

In rural Bangladesh, almost every housewife keeps and rears poultry or cattle. But they do not know about improved breeds, which are more profitable than the local ones. The project is promoting income-generating activities using improved poultry or cattle through which participants can earn more with less investment in a short time. The activities do not add to women’s workload and they are designed to be managed by women on their own. The project is providing technical support such as training, inputs and credit on a demand basis. The project coordination unit is closely monitoring the activities undertaken by these women and also assisting in marketing their products.

Mira, a 38-year-old participant from Sylhet (in northeast Bangladesh) has had a month of intensive training, arranged by the project coordination unit on the MINI HATCHERY from the Government Duck Farm. Here she learned how to hatch chicks and ducklings from fertile eggs using the RICE HUSK MINI HATCHERY technique – an improved indigenous method. She now earns an extra 4,000 to 5,000 Taka (US$59 to 74) per month.

The dissemination of small-scale livestock technology at the grass-roots level has contributed to women’s empowerment and their increased participation in project activities and in decision-making. At the same time, increased consumption of livestock products has improved the nutritional status of poor families.

Jebun Nahar
Project coordinator

 

Access to markets

Many rural poor people are landless agricultural labourers or people engaged in non-farm activities, such as basket making, weaving, pottery, small-scale retailing and seasonal labour migration. Efforts to increase agricultural productivity and income from non-farm activities can only be effective if they are linked to markets. However, poor people living in remote rural areas face difficulties in accessing the markets. In an attempt to improve this access, IFAD supports the construction and maintenance of physical infrastructure such as rural roads.

Several IFAD projects, such as those in Bangladesh, China and Viet Nam have components related to rural infrastructure. In commenting on the Third Rural Infrastructure Development Project in Bangladesh, the June 2005 country programme evaluation reported significant impact from the construction of roads and markets: “freight cost/km/passenger decreased by 20 per cent, cost of vehicle operation decreased by at least 30 per cent, transport movement frequency increased by 50 per cent, transport time decreased by 20 per cent”. The evaluation noted that this resulted in “enhanced market access, reduced input costs, and increased employment opportunities”.

The December 2005 mid-term review of the West Guangxi Poverty Alleviation Project in China reported that “rural road construction has almost been completed to excellent technical standards”. By June 2005, 135.6 km of village road, which represents about 70 per cent of the total project target, had been completed.

Rural poor people are also constrained by limited business and negotiating skills and lack of group organization, which could give them the bargaining power they require to interact on equal terms with other traders. In its operations in Asia and the Pacific, IFAD supports the establishment of producer organizations such as cooperatives, and the development of microenterprises. It also helps to train producers to identify new markets, links farmers with the private sector and builds market information systems.

Microenterprise development has been one of the most challenging components of the Rural Income Diversification Project in Tuyen Quang Province in Viet Nam. The project has established small-scale chopstick factories in partnership with the communities. The project provides training, the community contributes the capital for building the factory, and a private-sector retailer buys the chopsticks that are produced. As the factory uses bamboo, which is available in abundance in Tuyen Quang, and the factory is labour intensive and uses local labour, it has created an opportunity for poor households to obtain income by both supplying bamboo and earning wages. There is a great demand for chopsticks as these are often used and thrown away after every meal. Moreover, the project claims that people are protecting their forests better now, as they earn income from the bamboo.

Ensuring food security through increased income

Increased access to financial services and markets enables poor people to earn higher incomes, which can play a major role in enhancing food security at household level. Apart from using this indirect approach in assisting rural households to ensure food security, IFAD also focuses on enhancing the productivity of agriculture and related activities through a variety of interventions. In China and India, for example, IFAD collaborates with WFP in implementing food-for-work projects as complements to loan-funded activities. Projects in Bangladesh, India and Nepal have components that work to improve poor people’s access to productive assets such as forests and water, thus improving food security.

The country programme evaluation noted that in the Agricultural Diversification and Intensification Project in Bangladesh “all beneficiaries report 30 to 40 per cent increases in the frequency of consumption of protein foods”. The evaluation went on to say that “overall cropping intensity increased by 12.9 per cent, with vegetable growing area increasing by 32 per cent”. The project also diversified farmers’ income sources and according to the evaluation “42 per cent of the respondents reported increased food security and 80 per cent reported increased quality of food intake”.

The Agricultural Support Services Project in Kyrgyzstan has been pivotal in ensuring rural poor people’s access to extension services by developing a model for rural advisory services. This model has evolved into a community-driven extension system and early signs show that it is sustainable. According to the latest assessment of progress, the project achieved sustained growth in agricultural production and farmers are diversifying into new and more profitable crops.

The Arhangai Rural Poverty Alleviation Project in Mongolia developed a livestock restocking system to assist poor herders whose livestock holdings were too small to maintain their families. The project succeeded in improving the livelihoods of herders as livestock numbers and products grew. The income and the quality and quantity of food of the targeted households improved during a time when Mongolia was in a political and economical transition period. However, the harsh winter destroyed much of the project’s early impact because it was not possible to take measures to prepare for the winter in time. In addition to livestock production, the project supported vegetable production with households that had no or only a few livestock. Homegarden-based vegetable production was new to many people, but it spread rapidly and improved household diets, and the surplus was traded against livestock and cash. The new IFAD-funded Rural Poverty Reduction Programme is building on this positive experience by strengthening the key institutions and the supply chain in order to render the activities sustainable.

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Improving equitable access to productive natural resources and technology

IFADOne of the most important factors leading to entrenched poverty is lack of access to natural resources such as land, water and forests. Their inequitable distribution and the exclusion of rural poor people from decisions about their use are sources of social conflict. Reducing social tension and improving planning for sustainable and equitable resource use are key challenges throughout the developing world.

In addition, where pressure on land and water is great, natural resource degradation has reached alarming levels. About 550 million hectares of land are degraded in the Asia and the Pacific region. Estimates show that close to 40 per cent of the region’s population live in areas prone to drought and desertification, and soil degradation is a significant problem across the region’s agro-ecological zones. Forests are also being rapidly depleted. In the process of deforestation, vast expanses of naturally fragile land, particularly upper catchment areas, have been exposed to soil erosion. IFAD’s work on arresting the degradation of natural resources and regenerating them has focused mainly on enhancing community awareness and capacity to deal with diminishing productivity. As a result, a number of regenerative technologies are now available for upland and mountainous areas.

The Asia and the Pacific Division is experimenting with a range of approaches to enhance poor people’s access to common property resources and to improve their productivity. One important experience concerns the Leasehold Forestry and Livestock Project in Nepal,which is building on the successes of the earlier IFAD-supported Hills Leasehold Forestry and Forage Development Project. Experience has shown that communities can transform degraded public forest land into productive farmland. By bringing poor households together into leasehold forestry groups and giving them 40-year leases, the project is helping to reduce poverty while reforesting the hills of Nepal.

Since poverty and resource degradation are closely linked, IFAD programmes and projects contribute to sustainable management of land and water and to the rehabilitation of the environment. For example, IFAD is supporting the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) with a grant aimed at testing institutional mechanisms for the programme Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services (RUPES). The programme has demonstrated that improved land tenure, as the main reward mechanism for watershed protection and carbon sequestration projects, helped to resolve long-standing conflicts over land. It also provides tenure security in return for a commitment from the upland poor people to maintain or restore environmental services. The programme helped farmers develop community forestry schemes that envision land tenure for 25 years, after a five-year trial period.

Under the Second Eastern Zone Agricultural Programme in Bhutan, which closed in December 2005, IFAD made special efforts to identify potential areas for future investment in sustainable resource use. The activities identified included harvesting of non-timber forest products, community-based natural resource management, and demonstration of improved fodder to enhance the productivity of arable land.  Some of these activities, notably the harvesting of non-timber forest products, will be supported under a new follow-up project funded by IFAD in the same project area.

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Enhancing IFAD’s catalytic impact 

IFADIn its attempt to achieve the greatest possible impact in enabling rural poor people to overcome poverty, IFAD focuses on critical poverty bottlenecks and on increasing the catalytic effects of its activities. This involves helping to establish institutional and policy frameworks that support poor people, harnessing and disseminating knowledge, and developing new partnerships and strengthening new ones.

Helping to establish institutional and policy frameworks that support poor people

Recent assessments of IFAD’s work have shown that, despite its longstanding commitment to developing a dialogue on rural policy issues, there is little evidence that this is happening systematically, either with governments or with other development partners. Moreover, while projects can provide a platform for policy-level discussions, it is often the use of non-lending instruments, especially country-specific analytical work and related capacity-building that is key to developing effective processes of policy dialogue.

In view of the above and IFAD’s mandate to assist member countries in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, IFAD has formulated a grant programme in conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to:

  • strengthen the capacity of key government agencies in the analysis, formulation, implementation and monitoring of pro-poor policies
  • promote sharing of experiences and lessons learned from successful pro-poor policies
  • promote greater participation of civil society and the private sector in pro-poor policy dialogue and advocacy

In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, IFAD focuses on supporting household and individual-based activities and initiatives; this is a practical way of promoting pro-poor institutional transformation in the context of a centrally planned economy. The microcredit scheme, which was first piloted by IFAD and then replicated by a few other partners, is a particularly useful instrument.

The Community-Based Rural Development Project in Kampong Thom and Kampot in Cambodia, reported considerable progress in establishing the structures and processes for decentralized service delivery of project activities in both provinces. Since the start of the commune-level government, there has been a growing realization of the role of the district integration workshops. In these workshops participants discuss commune development priorities in the commune development plans, preparation of provincial work plans and investment programmes.

The Asia and the Pacific Division uses portfolio review meetings as an occasion for policy dialogue. For example, the workshop held in February 2005 by the Government of Lao People’s Democratic Republic and IFAD, brought to light a number of important policy and operational issues that IFAD and other development partners are facing. In March 2005, the Prime Minister issued a note to ten concerned ministries and three provinces to implement the recommendations from the portfolio review meeting.

The review of the country strategic opportunities paper (COSOP) for Sri Lanka has identified a number of areas for policy dialogue with government. The first relates to the security of tenure and land use rights for poor people in the dry zones, and their access to government land in the areas of increased production. The second area of IFAD policy focus relates to the access to estate land for estate workers and landless people from villages surrounding the estates. As a part of the Dry Zone Livelihood Support and Partnership Programme, IFAD has agreed to provide substantial grant resources to support policy dialogue on land tenure in the dry zones for the benefit of poor families. Another area of policy dialogue that IFAD has initiated in Sri Lanka concerns the need for more systematic and carefully implemented decentralization of power to provincial councils and community-based organizations by streamlining bureaucratic procedures and facilitating grass-roots activities.

Facilitating learning and innovation

As an institution with a challenging mandate of rural poverty reduction, to be achieved essentially by playing a catalytic role, IFAD needs to manage its intellectual resources in a way that helps to innovate and to scale up successful innovations. For example, IFAD has been closely associated with most innovations in microfinance – be it the Grameen Bank, self-help groups or financial service associations – and it continues to encourage contextual innovations in promoting microfinance institutions and scaling them up.

The Agriculture, Marketing and Enterprise Promotion Programme in Bhutan has made a specific budget allocation for communication, for activities such as creating a website and producing brochures about the programme. These communication activities are intended to build awareness about the programme as a major poverty reduction operation in eastern Bhutan and to strengthen information-sharing among stakeholders.
In Cambodia, IFAD’s knowledge-management initiatives include:

  • using indigenous knowledge in the extension options in project design and implementation
  • incorporating lessons learned from projects financed by IFAD and other donors in project design
  • sharing information, knowledge and experience among projects
  • extending the mechanisms of policy guidance meetings to all ongoing projects

In Sri Lanka, IFAD has contributed to the establishment of the Post-Tsunami Development Assistance Database (DAD), which is being prepared with UNDP technical support. The UN Country Team in Sri Lanka, including IFAD, has recently set up a joint website to disseminate information about their operations in the country. IFAD’s pages on the website are regularly updated and improved. The IFAD country programme has continued to benefit from a number of regional or multicountry technical assistance grants that support knowledge and technology generation and dissemination on various issues, including gender mainstreaming, sustainable use of coconut genetic resources, and organic production of underutilized medicinal, aromatic and natural dye plants.

The Knowledge Networking for Rural Development in Asia/Pacific Region (ENRAP) is an IFAD-funded initiative to support Internet use among its rural development projects in the Asia and the Pacific region. Its ultimate aim is to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the agricultural sector in the pursuit of sustainable human development. Its method is the strategic introduction and application of information and communication technologies. ENRAP plays an important role in developing people’s skills to access, manage and share knowledge from IFAD project activities across the region, in collaboration with selected groups of IFAD projects and local specialists. The users of the knowledge sharing system include project staff and their partners, who work directly with rural communities and help make the knowledge available at the grass-roots level. ENRAP investigates strategies, processes, methods and technologies to support rural communication and knowledge networking, and develops recommendations for future activities.

The Matale Regional Economic Advancement Project in Sri Lanka used ENRAP support for the purchase of a server and switchboard and to set up LAN cabling. They leveraged this with the project’s internal resources to graduate from dial-up connectivity in one terminal to a leased Internet line that provided Internet connectivity to all the project staff.
In the Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resource Management Project in the Philippines, ENRAP supported a documentation workshop where participants were trained in how to write case studies on best practices and lessons learned, and on how to make video documentation. Twenty-five participants, including 16 women, from implementing agencies and local government units involved in the project benefited from this training.
The language barrier was found to be the biggest constraint preventing people from accessing the ENRAP website. In response to this, a local website has been developed in Viet Nam in Vietnamese for learning and cross-fertilization among IFAD-assisted projects in the country and for gathering input for national policies. ENRAP has also developed a sub-website for China to provide access to information and a platform for discussion in Chinese.

Communication within projects remains a challenge for IFAD. For example, the implementation of the Oudomxai Community Initiative Support Project in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic is facing communication difficulties with the ethnic minorities who represent about 75 per cent of poor people in Oudomxai. Many of these people do not speak Lao. Facing this language barrier, the project continues to rely on the skills of implementing staff who have learned the languages of the ethnic minorities.

 

Case study

Systematization: documenting project experiences in the North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project for Upland Areas in India

Systematization is a participatory documentation technique that has been promoted by FIDAMERICA, IFAD’s network in Latin America. As it produced positive results in documenting and disseminating poverty-reduction lessons in this region, ENRAP has been trying to apply systematization in IFAD projects in Asia and the Pacific. An example is the Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project for Upland Areas in Meghalaya, India.

Selecting themes

Based on the FIDAMERICA experience, ENRAP provided a set of guidelines that were customized in consultation with the project team and the facilitators. These guidelines emphasized the importance of focusing on key issues within a selected broad topic, of looking at the situation in the project area before the project started, after the project intervention, and of examining the process of change. Subsequently, the project selected four thematic areas for documentation of its key project experiences.
 
Identifying facilitators

Facilitators guide project staff in investigating each of the chosen themes, dividing responsibilities among team members, identifying the tools to be used and assisting with the report writing. The project used monitoring and evaluation officers from other IFAD projects and external experts as facilitators. The advantage of using external experts as facilitators is that they bring a fresh perspective to projects, whereas monitoring and evaluation officers have the ability to track project progress but have more difficulty in documenting project lessons.

Selecting villages and forming study teams

Based on the richness of project experience and ease of access, the project selected the West Garo Hills as a site for the study. In consultation with local community-based organizations, the project and district staff in West Garo Hills then selected villages. Based on this, they formulated a group activity plan and divided teams according to their interests and expertise.

The documenting process

The teams chose different themes for research and over a seven-day period they worked on defining the research methodology, dividing data collected through interviews, focusing group discussions, documenting findings and presenting them to other teams for peer review and finalization. The result of this exercise was a set of comprehensive reports on chosen topics.

Dissemination of lessons documented

The exercise demonstrated how project staff and different stakeholders could document their experiences in a systematic way and in a participatory manner. It gave them an opportunity to focus on evaluating their own work and to reflect on the project’s successes and challenges. They also benefited from improving their documentation skills and they recognized what else needs to be done to comprehensively document their learning experiences. ENRAP and the project staff hope that the research findings will help inform planning decisions and will be shared with other projects to raise the visibility of the project’s impact and to promote a more fruitful policy dialogue between projects and the government.

Shalini Kala
ENRAP facilitator

 

 

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Contact

[email protected]
www.ifad.org

Martina Spisiakova
Tel: 3906-54592295

Making a Difference in Asia and the Pacific

Issue 10: May/June 2006 - Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities

Issue 9: March/April 2006 - Access to land

Issue 8: January/February 2006 - Agricultural Technology Management

Issue 7: November/December 2005 - Pro-poor policies

Issue 6: September/October 2005 - Gender & MDGs

Issue 5: July/August 2005 - Partnership

Issue 4: May/June 2005 - Rural Finance

Issue 3: March/ April 2005 - Donor Harmonization

Issue 2: January/ February 2005

Issue 1: November/ December 2004

Upcoming events:

Annual performance review workshop, Bangkok, Thailand, 20 – 23 June 2006

Regional meeting – Knowledge Networking for Rural Development in Asia and the Pacific (ENRAP), Bangkok, Thailand, 18 – 19 June 2006

Meeting on “Upscaling and Linking Organizations of the Poor: Learning from Experiences of Civil Society Organizations and IFAD Projects in Asia (SCOPE) - a joint project of IFAD, the Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP) and The Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC), Bangkok, Thailand, 24 June 2006

Evaluation of the IFAD Regional Strategy (EVEREST) in Asia and the Pacific, Manila, the Philippines, 28 - 29 June 2006

26th Conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, IFAD Symposium title – Risk, Vulnerability and Poverty in Asia and the Pacific: Problems, Prospects and Priorities, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, 12 – 18 August 2006

IFAD Seminar on Risk, Vulnerability and Poverty in Asia and the Pacific: Problems, Prospects and Priorities, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 11 August 2006

Indonesia
Loan negotiations – Rural Empowerment and Agricultural Development Programme in Central Sulawesi, August 2006

Philippines
Seminar with representatives of farmers’ organizations - Country Strategy Opportunities Paper (COSOP), Manila, 26 June 2006

Upcoming missions:

Bangladesh
Formulation mission – Finance for Enterprise Development and Employment Creation (FEDEC) Project, 1 - 31 July 2006

Cambodia
Exist strategy consultation mission – Community-Based Rural Development Project in Kampong Thom and Kampot, 19-21 July 2006

Follow-up mission – Rural Poverty Reduction Project in Prey Veng and Svay Rieng, 24 – 27 July 2006

Appraisal mission – Rural Livelihoods Improvement Project, September/October 2006

Indonesia
Inception mission – Papua and West Irian Jaya 27 June – 9 July 2006

Nepal
Formulation mission and consultation on Country Strategic Opportunities Paper (COSOP), July 2006

About IFAD

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is a specialized agency of the United Nations, dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in developing countries. Its work in remote rural areas of the world helps countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Through low-interest loans and grants, IFAD develops and finances projects that enable rural poor people to overcome poverty themselves.

IFAD tackles poverty not just as a lender, but as an advocate for the small farmers, herders, fisherfolk, landless workers, artisans and indigenous peoples who live in rural areas and represent 75 per cent of the world's 1.2 billion extremely poor people. IFAD works with governments, donors, non-governmental organizations, local communities and many other partners to fight the underlying causes of rural poverty. It acts as a catalyst, bringing together partners, resources, knowledge and policies that create the conditions in which rural poor people can increase agricultural productivity, as well as seek out other options for earning income.

IFAD-supported rural development programmes and projects increase rural poor people's access to financial services, markets, technology, land and other natural resources.

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