May 10, 2005—They are known as the facilitators. They are the people hired as part of the World Bank’s community development program in Aceh – with the task of empowering the poor and disenfranchised. In Aceh today, these facilitators are playing a vital role in the decision making process to rebuild areas devastated by last December’s tsunami. Today these people – many of whom lost members of their own families and friends in the disaster – sit down with villagers in Aceh to help them define and communicate their own reconstruction needs. In some cases, the facilitators have already been instrumental in helping villages obtain funds for small scale reconstruction projects at the community level – water supply, sanitation and housing repairs. The World Bank already has about 6000 facilitators covering some 2000 villages in Aceh – about half the number of villages in the region. Now in response to a request from the Government of Indonesia, the World Bank plans to expand the number of facilitators to reach all villages in Aceh over the next nine months. The facilitators are an integral part of the World Bank’s “bottom up” approach to the reconstruction of Aceh. It’s an approach designed to let the Acehnese people and the local communities take the lead in the recovery programs. The Bank’s Country Director for Indonesia, Andrew Steer, says the network of facilitators provide an opportunity for the Bank’s and other donor’s programs to reach deep into the fabric of Aceh’s communities. “Some people ask why it isn’t done yet,” Steer says, referring to the reconstruction process. “But you simply can’t rush in with top-down solutions in such a situation. It’s so tempting look at the vast area of kilometer upon kilometer of wasteland, and say ‘Let’s hire a big construction company to come in and build the homes, build roads and put water in’. In a few cases that might be the right strategy. But in most cases it’s much better to follow the bottom up approach.” Immediately following the disaster, the facilitators were mobilized as a critical source of information on the impact of the earthquake and tsunami. Now they serve as the backbone of a two-way flow of information – as a planning mechanism for communities to come together and define their needs and also as a delivery mechanism for channeling different forms of donor assistance. A Difficult Transition Steer describes the situation in Aceh today as an “intense transition – as the first emergency phase ends and preparation for real reconstruction gathers pace. “Small amounts of reconstruction are already taking place,” he says. “Everywhere you see small activities and investments, but you don’t yet see the large scale reconstruction that you will hopefully see in six months. So it’s a transition phase, which is extremely delicate. Expectations are high for quick action. Yet the affected citizens need to be fully consulted as to the plans for reconstruction, which takes time” For many of the people in Aceh, Steer says it remains an agonizingly difficult time. He mentions meeting a group of about 30 people who’d returned to a village which prior to the tsunami had about 1000 people. “Of those maybe about 500 were killed. Thirty have come back. The rest might still be scattered all over the area -staying with friends or living in camps. “Sometimes you know where they are. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes they are still suffering from the tremendous psychological shock. Sometimes they don’t really know yet who is dead. “ In communities which have been entirely destroyed, Steer says it’s necessary to get those who’ve survived the tsunami together at the community level and start talking to them about what is their vision for the future rather that taking a top-down approach.. “It obviously taken two or three months for citizens who’ve lost family members – who’ve lost children and their homes, to reach the stage where they can and really want to plan for the future in a detailed way. We’ve just reached that stage now. It’s a very key stage and has to be done just right.” In the case of the 30 people who returned to the site of their former village, Steer says one of the first tasks was to elect a new village leader. “The old village leader had been lost, and the facilitators from the program that we support were already there and ready to talk about how they as a group could start thinking through the future.” Redesigning Support In its bid to ensure the reconstruction process proceeds with the wishes of the communities at the forefront, the World Bank is restructuring a number of existing projects. As part of the plan to expand the number of facilitators in Aceh, the Bank will use both its Kecamatan Development Program (already in 28,000 villages in Indonesia) and its Urban Poverty Program (already a national program in most of the cities of the country) to recruit and intensively train community facilitators in both rural and urban areas. . The networks, combined with funding from the Japan Social Development Fund, will finance initiatives to re-establish a province-wide radio network and a widow’s program that will grow to reach up to 10,000 households. The Bank is also introducing a new mechanism to channel reconstruction funds to district governments in Aceh. A number of projects that had been in the pipeline are also being revamped to support reconstruction activities. In some cases, grant co-financing for the projects is expected to come from the newly established multi donor trust fund. |
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