POOR RURAL COMMUNITIES DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

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The Poor Rural Communities Development Project seeks to improve livelihood security, and achieve a sustained participation of the rural poor in project design, implementation, and in the monitoring and evaluation aspects within the three project provinces. The project entails six components: 1) Sustainable mountain agriculture - will support agricultural development, and sustainable livelihoods in villages where communities live in remote mountainous environments. The design and implementation of the component is based on the two principles of targeting and reaching poor households, and achieving environmental sustainability. The following activities are included: improving household agricultural productivity and diversification; developing farmer-to-farmer services; and, agricultural training and technical support services. 2) Basic rural infrastructure - includes construction and improvement of roads, tracks and paths; provision of potable water supplies for humans and livestock; construction of small water conservancy works (including irrigation and drainage) with associated land improvements; extension of rural electrification and communications networks; and, household energy and sanitation improvements. 3) Basic education - will address the challenges of a limited access to primary education by poor and vulnerable children, particularly girls and disabled children, of ineffective adult training and education for rural community development, of inadequate skills and capabilities of teachers for both schooling, and adult education, and, of the high burden of education expenses on poor families, in addition to the burden of poor infrastructure. To this end, the component comprises a nine-year compulsory pilot education program in selected project villages, seeking to integrate schools and communities through the transformation of schools into community learning centers. Innovative teaching methodologies will be provided to teachers, and, training services to adults will be provided in project villages, with a focus on functional literacy education. 4) Basic health - will provide financial assistance for medical care to the poor, ensuring basic health services, which will include free maternal care and immunization, and, support for inpatient care expenses; health education for communities on basic health, and HIV/AIDS will be also supported, and, training assistance will be provided. 5) Community capacity building - will strengthen grassroots capacity in community development management, and includes activities to improve basic production and skills within poor farm households; strengthen community leaders' basic skills on local administrative management, basic financial management, development of village-level planning, local dispute resolution, and small-scale infrastructure construction, including special training for women. 6) Project management and monitoring - will support and facilitate the timely provision of counterpart funding, smooth coordination among government line agencies, and, prod an effective project supervision, and monitoring and evaluation.