National Community Initiatives Project

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The National Community Initiatives Project (NCIP) builds on a series of community-driven development (CDD) operations (Village Investment and CASA-1000 Community Support projects) in the Kyrgyz Republic. It will be implemented in 40 rayons (districts) across seven oblasts (regions)—Naryn, Issyk-Kul, Chui, Talas, Batken, Osh and Jalal-Abad. It will scale up, standardize, and deepen impact of CDD operations by: (i) providing a national platform covering all 40 districts (to date, different projects separately covered northern and southern regions); (ii) increasing average size of infrastructure sub-grants to target sub-districts; (iii) expanding livelihoods support, including support to women and youth; (iv) further integrating climate considerations into community mobilization, local planning, infrastructure investments, and livelihood activities; (v) streamlining project processes and institutional arrangements; and (vi) embedding participatory approaches into LSGs. While NCIP will provide a national platform across all 40 districts, this operation will cover only one Aiyl Aimak (sub-district) per district (i.e., 40 out of 235 AAs). The target 40 AAs will be selected based on agreed criteria such as poverty, level of budget subsidies, remoteness, and population. The selection criteria have been endorsed by the relevant agencies. Under Component 1, each targeted AA will receive social mobilization, capacity building, and social infrastructure investments. Component 1 investment allocations will be adequate to finance social infrastructure, such as kindergarten, school, health facility construction or rehabilitation, integration of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, water supply, sewer and irrigation systems. Component 2 livelihoods support will include market assessments, and provision of facilities and trainings in entrepreneurship, value chain and other business skills. These services will draw on market and value chain assessments of relevant livelihood opportunities in sectors such as agriculture, handicrafts, tourism, digital and others. Given limited funds, Component 2 livelihood support will be provided to AAs based on their Component 1 implementation performance and quality of business plans. Both components 1 and 2 will include a focus on expanding access to childcare via investments that expand access to kindergartens, training on early childhood development and alternative childcare models. Component 3 will support project management, monitoring and evaluation. Component 4 is a zero-dollar Contingent Emergency Response Component (CERC) that would provide support in the event of an eligible crisis or emergency, including climate-related disasters, to reallocate project funds to support emergency response.