The fundamental objectives of World Bank activities in the Region are to reduce poverty and increase the material prosperity and social well-being of the population. Social development plays a critical role through interventions designed to lay the foundation for growth that is both equitable and sustainable. ECSSD’s Social Development Team supports the social sustainability of Bank projects and programs aimed at helping governments improve governance and accountability, build sound and inclusive institutions (particularly through focused community-driven development, promote vibrant civil societies, address the needs of vulnerable groups (including youth, women, and minorities), combat corruption, develop and implement policies that build social cohesion at local, regional and national levels, and allow fuller citizen participation in all aspects of development. The three pillars of the ECA SD strategy call for: Supporting the development of equitable and transparent institutions, good governance and reduced corruption, and vibrant civil societies.
Supporting client governments to better respond to the needs and priorities of the poor, vulnerable, and/or marginalized, through active policies of inclusion.
Reducing the risk of conflict, and assisting post-conflict countries to rebuild social cohesion as well as to restore livelihoods and growth.
ECSSD’s Social Development Team supports these objectives through stand-alone projects and analytic work, integrating social analysis into lending activities and programs; engagement with civil society, quality enhancement through review of projects and work on social safeguards. The following thematic areas exemplify the range of Team activities. Promoting equitable and transparent institutions  Governance and social accountability. Extensive changes in the organization of economic and political life have profoundly altered the nature of governance and the functioning of institutions in ECA. Relations between states and citizens have fundamentally changed, with states now divesting themselves of powers and functions to new local governments or the emerging private sector. ECSSD supports the incipient efforts of client governments to move from centralized decision-making to decentralized participatory decision-making, adopting community-based development approaches that can strengthen the capacity of communities to plan and implement development projects. As part of its efforts, ECSSD is involved in local level governance pilots and participatory budgeting in Albania, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova and Russia.
 Citizen engagement. ECSSD coordinates Bank participation in a three year program led by the EU commission on the sustainability of civil society organizations in ECA. It also works with governments, as in Slovakia, to develop their capacity to conduct public consultations on government reforms.
Enterprise restructuring. Closure or downsizing of large enterprises, including those of extractive industries, has created significant unemployment and pockets of vulnerability, and damaged social cohesion. While parts of the younger, more skilled and/or more entrepreneurial population are leaving in search of work, others have been impeded by the difficulty in finding affordable housing, obtaining information about employment, and reluctance to cut ties with local support networks. The team is providing analytical input on enterprise restructuring in Serbia and Croatia though PSIA and policy notes; in Romania it is managing operational work on mine closure and assisting affected communities to develop alternative livelihood sources. Social impact of energy sector reforms. Sectoral reform involves inherent contradictions between the objectives of: (a) restructuring utilities and industries to promote efficiency; and (b) safeguarding livelihoods and protecting the poor against the adverse economic and social impacts of job loss and increased utility costs. Even if targeting is used to reduce inequities that arise from the extra burden on the poor, if prices are set for maximum cost-recovery and efficiency, the poor may sharply reduce consumption (with resulting health and safety problems), or resort to illegal cutting of trees for fuel (resulting in deforestation). The Social Development Team has applied Poverty and Social Impact Analyses to energy sector reform in the Kyrgyz Republic, Armenia and Moldova as an input to the policy dialogue in these countries.  Community driven development. In Albania, the Community Works Project uses local participatory process to improve access to social and economic infrastructure and social services through sustainable micro-projects, and by promoting institutional development at local level. In Croatia, ECSSD manages a project supporting the reintegration of returnees through the development of sustainable economic opportunities. In Georgia, ECSSD manages several interventions and pilots aimed at developing community capacity to conserve biodiversity, take an active role in managing protected areas, and engage in bottom-up development planning. The team supports efforts to catalyze community support around culture and turn their cultural and natural heritage into income-generating assets by piloting community-based approaches to cultural tourism. Activities include the Community Development and Culture Project in Macedonia and the Armenia Cultural Heritage Initiative , the Trans-Caucasus Tourism Initiative, which is piloting approaches to community-based tourism in the three South Caucasus Countries, and a donor-financed activity designed to promote Community Empowerment for Cultural Tourism and Heritage Protection.
Creating Inclusive Societies  Given mounting evidence that high levels of exclusion and inequality can reduce growth and undermine poverty alleviation, promoting inclusion is central to social development activities in ECA. To date, even in the “advanced reformers” of CEE, not all segments of the population have equal opportunities to participate in their societies. Many forms of current discrimination and social exclusion are related to individual or group characteristics such as age, gender, disability, social group, and location.
Gender. Although unemployment rates, for example, do not exhibit strong systematic gender biases, women report pervasive discrimination and increased sexual harassment at the workplace. Many women have moved into the riskier and poorly paid segments of the informal labor market, or withdrawn entirely due to the breakdown in child care. In addition to targeted gender activities such as the Women's Empowerment and Socio-Economic Development project in post-conflict Tajikistan, the team has carried out gender assessments in Ukraine and Tajikistan, an ESW on trafficking in SEE and makes use of its quality enhancement responsibilities to support better gender mainstreaming into projects and programs.
 Youth. Children and youth have been disproportionately affected by impoverishment, collapse of social services, and reduced opportunities. The number of children placed in residential institutions or forced to live “on the street” has increased significantly since the 1990s due to poverty, unemployment, family breakup, war, and displacement. While opportunities for educated or entrepreneurial youth have expanded in large cities, in countries or regions where growth has been slow, young people have responded to abuse, neglect, and the reduction of opportunities with increased drug and alcohol consumption, and risky sexual behavior. At the forefront of Bank efforts to focus on youth as assets for development, the SD team has sought to mainstream youth issues across investment programs, as well as increase lending for youth issues. The Macedonia Youth project has identified new outreach approaches, including community-based schemes with private sector involvement to target at-risk children and youth. This project will also engage youth in designing programs on their behalf. The team has also initiated analytic and operational work addressing issues of youth exclusion and empowerment in post-conflict countries of SEE and Southern Russia , In Kosovo, the team supports innovative approaches to youth work and youth entrepreneurs.
Roma. Many ECA countries have minority populations that experienced some form of discrimination and or exclusion long before the transition. Inclusion of the Roma, for example, is a long-standing problem in the CEE and SEE, where they constitute a large and severely marginalized ethnic group. The requirements of acceptance into the EU have provided considerable impetus to tackle this issue. ECSSD is supporting a project in Romania aimed at social inclusion of Roma through priority interventions in the most disadvantaged Roma communities. It also supports the decade of the Roma and the Roma Educational Fund. Rural and/or isolated populations. The deterioration of social services that accompanied economic downturn and institutional change in ECA has contributed to exclusion of the rural population. The team therefore supports operations that address rural exclusion by supporting social services in Poland and working with communities in Azerbaijan to fund micro-projects, increase infrastructure services, and improve living standards.  People affected by land expropriation or project-related displacement. ECSSD provides specialized support to infrastructure and energy sector projects, to help guide the preparation of resettlement policy frameworks and resettlement action plans where projects involve land acquisition and displacement, such as in the case of roads projects (Azerbaijan, Romania), coastal zone planning (Albania), gas storage (Turkey), and private sector investment in lignite mining (Kosovo). ECSSD also is engaged in analyzing legal and institutional structures relevant to safeguard issues to identify gaps between country practices and Bank principles in countries where safeguard issues are likeliest to arise. As part of this effort, ECSSD has prepared an Equivalence and Acceptability Assessment in Romania. In Kosovo, the team is providing technical assistance in developing an institutional and legal framework for future mining-related resettlement.
Reducing conflict risk and rebuilding social cohesion in post-conflict societies To complement the reconstruction of physical infrastructure in post-conflict countries, ECSSD is focusing on the equally critical task of institutional and social reconstruction – restoration of livelihoods, a sense of security, and social trust, along with the reintegration of those most affected by conflict into local economies and societies. In Croatia, the Social and Economic Reconstruction Project focuses on helping war-affected parts of the population. In addition, most of the youth and gender activities and several of the cultural heritage activities undertaken by the team have been targeted for post-conflict countries as a way of building social cohesion among population segments particularly affected by the aftereffects of conflict.
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