ID National Program for Community Empowerment in Rural Areas

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The National Program for Community Empowerment (PNPM's) overall objective is to reduce poverty and improve local-level governance in rural areas of Indonesia through the provision of investment resources to support productive proposals developed by communities, using a participatory planning process. There are four components to the project. The first component is the delivering block grants to sub districts and villages are the main function of the PNPM-Rural program. In PNPM, block grants will make up approximately 85 percent of total project costs. Block grants take two forms: one type of block grant supports investment proposals made by villages and selected by consensus in an inter village meeting, the second type consists of block grants to support the participatory planning process and to ensure proper technical inputs into implementation. The second component is the facilitation and training, this component consists of salary and operational costs for the sub district technical and social facilitators. Activities will have a special focus on village and sub district forums, village and sub district executives, and district parliaments. The component will finance trainers, workshops, relevant materials, and quality reviews. The third component is the implementation support and technical assistance, which constitutes the formal project administration. It consists of three levels, each of which reports to the corresponding level of national, provincial or district government. The bulk of this component covers the costs of experienced technical and social facilitators, who provide technical advice, field oversight, and local-level coordination. Reviews show high returns to training facilitators, and the component will cover the costs of training, workshops, and materials for all PNPM-Rural consultants. Finally, the fourth component is for the support for project management. PNPM's special programs place several additional demands on normal government budgeting, particularly as the program prepares for the national scale-up. Most operational costs will be covered by Government of Indonesia (GOI). But this component covers several critical national-level activities needed to manage the national program: introducing electronic file management for Directorate General of Village Community Empowerment, within Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) (PMD), office improvements, and the provision of 15-20 national and international scholarships to provide advanced specialized training in management, fiduciary controls, and evaluation for key PNPM staff.