Participatory Community Development Seminar

From April 17 to 19, 2008 a seminar on Participatory Community Development was held for 30 ART partners, including 6 village mayors, representatives of NGOs, church related organizations, and 3 clergy. The goal of the seminar was to introduce the concept of community development; community mobilization and team building, needs assessment and participatory strategic planning for rural communities. The seminar introduced to the participants elaboration of Community Integrated Development Plan for 4 years. Elaboration of the mentioned plan, its approval in the general community meeting, and later approval by the regional authorities and the government has a great importance for the development of the rural communities, as until now very few communities have development plans, as all the rest have only the local municipality development plans, where all the sectors of community development are not included, and which is solely based on the available budget of the municipality.
The seminar participants learned about the methodology of participatory elaboration of Community Development Plans (CDP), including: planning steps and principles, formulation of social-economic and cultural-spiritual overview, problem identification and analysis, problem assessment using the “Problem acuteness and Trend” method, elaboration of Medium-Term Objectives and Underlying Priorities, applying priority setting matrix using pair-wise method, problem causality analysis and mapping of responsibilities, formulation of statement of outputs and project development. As a result of the workshop, 12 CDPs will be elaborated during one month period and be presented to the ART staff and trainer for comments, after which they will be finalized during follow-up workshop.