Community-driven development (CDD) is broadly defined as the process of giving control of development decisions and resources to community groups. Communities can be geographical entities, such as urban neighborhoods or villages, or groups with common interests, such as water user associations, parent-teacher associations, herders, members of a microcredit society, or women's groups. Once formed, these groups typically work in partnership with support organizations and service providers — local governments, the private sector, or NGOs — to develop and implement projects that meet their immediate priorities in education, health, sanitation, transportation, resource management, economic activities, and other livelihood issues.
CDD can be divided into four practice areas:
- Enabling environment: Development of policy and institutional reforms oriented toward increased control of decisions and resources by community groups and/or by participatory elected local governments.
- Participatory elected local governments: Elected local governments make decisions on planning, implementation, operation, and maintenance in partnership with community groups.
- Community control and management of investment funds: Community groups make decisions on planning, implementation, operation, and maintenance, and manage investment funds.
- Community control without direct management of investment funds: Community groups make decisions on planning, implementation, operation, and maintenance, without directly managing investment funds.
This note first presents evidence of CDD success, and follows with four case studies:
- Malawi Social Action Fund
- Zambia Social Investment Fund
- Romania Social Development Fund
- Tunisia Northwest Mountainous Areas Development Project
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