| There is growing consensus that community-driven development (CDD) is critical to advancing sustainable development in communities. This requires that communities own and drive the process, and that CDD is both mainstreamed and sustained as a countries' legitimate way of doing business.
However, too often the barrier to community driven development is the lack of an ongoing, inclusive, and widely representative mechanism that has legal standing at the community level; and the capacity to receive and disburse grant funds to multiple projects with appropriate accountability and level of transparency.
The capacities of a community development foundation directly address these concerns, and should be of special interest to bilateral donors and development institutions concerned about community capacity building and implementing programs.
Over 1400 community foundations now exist. Most are located and supported by foundations in donor countries. However, foundation support is increasing for such a mechanism in countries that receive foreign aid.
A community based foundation can function regionally, or even nationally. What is essential is that it operates with a representative board drawn from the community, and can receive and disburse multiple sources of financing, including philanthropic and government donations, to support projects and other community based activities.
They have the potential of relating and rationalizing a variety of projects that can build, broaden, and sustain social capital. They can support ongoing community participation to identify project needs in a programmatic context. Their existence can be pivotal to the inclusion of civil society in poverty reduction strategies, and in monitoring and implementation.
It is of particular importance that opinion leaders, development institutions, NGOS, and civil society leaders consider this mechanism as an effective way to link the development agendas to the capacities of the poor. However, it should not be ignored that there are formal or informal practices among religious groups, clans, and tribes that function in ways not dissimilar to a community development foundation.
As community foundations enable a new modality for strategically linking development, and the private sector, and civic institutions at the community level, it is a mechanism that might well serve the important work and leadership of governments in their global and local initiatives.
Eleanor Fink
Foundation Coordinator
World Bank, May 1, 2002
efink@worldbank.org
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