Social Funds Innovation Notes

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Community Foundations - The Relevance for Social Funds in Urban Areas : The Tanzania Social Action Fund Experience

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-02) Manjolo, Ida ; Likwelile, Servacius B ; Kamagenge, Amadeus M ; Mesik, Juraj ; Owen, Daniel

This newsletter concerns the relevance for social funds in Urban Areas. Social funds face a common challenge of sustaining the community capacities that are built and investments that are supported beyond the relatively short lifespan of external funding. For long-term sustainability, external funding needs to be replaced by a steady flow of domestic revenue. The Community foundation (CF) approach offers a number of advantages for urban work. Community foundations are independent organizations that provide grants to support a variety of projects identified and implemented by local residents. A CF does not replace the scale of resources and national reach achieved by social funds. But it can provide a partial answer to the sustainability challenge in some large and medium-size urban areas, where it can mobilize local resources and sustain social dynamism and participation in broad areas of development work.
Sierra Leone - The Road to Recovery : Results from a Beneficiary Impact Assessment

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-06) Hackett, Julie ; Sum, June-Wei

This note explores how a community-driven approach has successfully made inroads in Sierra Leone, a country racked by internal violence and without a tradition of widespread civic participation. By mobilizing village members to work together to rebuild physical infrastructure destroyed by the war, the World Bank's National Social Action Project is also rebuilding trust and collective action amongst a divided population. In particular, the project targeted areas not previously serviced by Government, 'newly accessible areas,' (those which were under rebel control until the end of the war in 2002); as well as the most vulnerable population groups within those areas.
A Story of Social and Economic Empowerment : The Evolution of “Community Professionals” in Sri Lanka

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-09) Munshi, Meena ; Hayward, Natasha ; Verardo, Barbara

This note explores the critical and innovative role played by 'community professionals' in the village self help learning initiative and Gemi Diriya programs in Sri Lanka. It describes the strategy used by the projects to mobilize and strengthen grassroots resource persons in support of achieving the Bank's mission of poverty reduction and livelihood improvement in rural Sri Lanka. In Gemi Diriya, community professionals are proving to be a driving force behind establishing sound village organizations, building capacity at the village level and promoting villager-villager learning. Institutionalizing the role of grassroots professionals by creating a 'community professional learning and training center' has allowed the program to scale up in a cost-effective and sustainable manner.
Integrating Social Funds into Local Development Strategies : Five Stories from Latin America

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-09) Serrano, Rodrigo

The steady movement towards decentralization that Latin America has experienced in the last decade, often referred to as the "quiet revolution", has led governments and donors to rethink the role Social Funds (SFs) should play in promoting local development. While SFs had been relatively successful in building local infrastructure, insufficient integration with public sector systems (both national and local) had raised well founded concerns about institutional and investment sustainability. This Note gives a quick overview of how reforms are unfolding in five SFs in Latin America, and highlights some features of the emerging models. It shows that many SFs are working closely with local governments. For these SFs the challenge is no longer whether they undermine local governments or not but rather how they can become an effective instrument of the country's decentralization policy-i.e., how their interactions with local governments, communities, and sectoral agencies advance the decentralization policy objectives and a more balanced approach to local development.