Economic Development of Poor Rural Communities Project

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