Social Funds Innovation Notes

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.

2002-01, Bezhanyan, Anush, Ionascu, Alexei

The note reviews the impact of the Moldova Social Investment Fund (MSIF), aimed at building local capacity, and improving services, though also looks at the implementation problems connected with community participation. To address these issues the MSIF management delegated responsibilities to implementing agencies, while also improved technical assistance. The development of partnerships achieved greater impact, which led to performance contracts, as tools to promote the sustainability of investments. Lessons reinforce the need for community ownership, and, suggest wider community consultation to identify, and solve technical issues. The need to maintain links with communities after subproject implementation is emphasized, to ensure long-term sustainability.

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.

2002-02, Vermehren, Andrea

The note presents the case of the Nicaragua Social Investment Fund (FISE), which accounts for an impressive record, having financed a significant number of projects in ten years (sixty percent of these benefiting the education sector). Moreover, it reinforced rural water, and municipal infrastructure projects, and strengthened its engagement in local capacity building at the municipal, and community levels. However, in the late 90s, it became clear there were limits to the effectiveness of supply side interventions, and both FISE, and the government began thinking about strengthening the demand side, through new ways to improve access to social services, and creating an opportunity for inclusion of the most vulnerable, particularly children living precariously in rural areas. The Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program is examined, a new window to finance cash transfers to extremely poor families in selected rural areas. Yet, the remarkable results of CCT questions its affordability, and sustainability. The Government is now starting to prioritize programs, and investments in the social sector to achieve greater impact. As for the question of the program's cost effectiveness, the Government is considering undertaking a comparative analysis to assess results.