Throughout Indonesia, as well as other developing countries, experience has illustrated that community-based recovery strategies are under most circumstances quicker, involve more affected people in their own recovery, and are more likely to lead to sustainable solutions than what top-down strategies can achieve. Community-driven and other participatory approaches to development planning are also likely to promote local solutions to problems of social conflict, which is extremely common in reconstruction situations where differential damages translate into different entitlements.

PNPM Mandiri Daerah Tertinggal is an innovative pilot program began by the Government of Indonesia in November 2006, designed to address governance and policy problems in 51 of the poorest districts across the country. PNPM Mandiri Daerah Tertinggal builds on other successful community development projects, such as the Kecamatan (Sub-District) Development Program (KDP), to align bottom-up planning procedures with the newly empowered district governments of Indonesia.

The program operates in 51 districts and 186 sub-districts across ten provinces: Bengkulu, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, Lampung, Maluku, North Maluku, Aceh, Central Sulawesi, North Sumatera, and Nusa Tengara Timur (NTT). It is also known and often referred to as Support for Poor and Disadvantaged Areas Project (SPADA) in English, and Percepatan Pembangunan Daerah Tertinggal Dan Khusus (P2DTK) in Bahasa Indonesia.

• Trained facilitators assist villagers in a participatory planning process, helping them identify problems and create local solutions.
  
  
• Communities then submit proposal ideas to the program’s technical review teams for consideration as either a sub-district or district project.
  
  
• The relevant team reviews and submits proposals to the Community Prioritization Forum, where all villages in the sub-district/district are represented, and 6 persons from each village have an equal vote in choosing the projects that are selected for block grants averaging USD 50,000 per project, as well as elect community members to make up the management team (TPK) that will oversee all projects.
  
  
• Projects will be grouped by sector, and the local government agency (Dinas) will partner with the management team, or also contract out for project implementation.

Project Coverage

The project recently began disbursing block grants to fund community-driven development projects. Key performance indicators for the project include: quality and level of community participation, improved access to cost-effective, quality infrastructure through participation planning processes, improvements in health and education outcomes, and decrease in incidences of violence and crime.

The World Bank provided US$104 million in loan financing while the MDF provided $22.47 million in grants. The MDF also provided $600,000 for TAF’s Economic Governance Assessment and $2.53 million for LGSP/RTI activities in Aceh-Nias. The total project cost was $171.72 million ($37.07 million earmarked for Aceh and Nias, $134.65 million for the other regions).

PNPM Daerah Tertinggal is part of the Government’s flagship poverty alleviation program, Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Masyarakat (PNPM) or the National Program for Community Empowerment. The Ministry of Disadvantaged Areas implements PNPM Daerah Tertinggal with an overall government coordination team (Tim Penggendali) providing policy oversight. PNPM Daerah Tertinggal is supported by the Government of Indonesia, The World Bank, DfID, and the Multi-Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias.

The program’s three key objectives are to strengthen local participation in development planning, promote private investment and job creation, and increase utilization of effective education, health, and dispute resolution services.

The team of the project has produced printed newsletters as a tool to update progress of this program. The newsletter is produced quarterly in .pdf format.

- April 2008: English | Bahasa Indonesia
- July 2008: English | Bahasa Indonesia
- October 2008: English | Bahasa Indonesia
- January 2009: English | Bahasa Indonesia