Collecting Evidence of Community and Local Development Scaling Up Success and Impact Worldwide
World Bank Community and Local Development Conference December 2022
Years ago the President of the World Bank hosted an informal lunch with Staff to discuss the status of the empowerment agenda, how to scale it up and his potential role and support. He saw Community Driven Development (CDD) as an integral component of empowerment, and expressed his concern that the examples provided to him so far were episodic and that the estimates quoted of $2 billion lent per year for CDD needed to be better verified. He asked for a serious review of the CDD portfolio, its magnitude and its real achievements, together with a broader framework for scaling up empowerment.
As a result of his request work on scaling up CDD moved ahead on several fronts. This led to the launching of a research project to document CDD examples across six countries in four regions of the Bank’s operations. Another one was the development of an analytical framework to scale up CDD with the objective of developing a comprehensive package of scaling up training materials.
I was hired as the consultant in charge of translating the up scaling CDD analytical framework into a consistently applied tool for case analysis. In this capacity I helped to operationalize the existing analytical framework by producing a set of research guidelines and by training local consultants from five World Bank regions in a practical, methodical approach to field study.
The scaling up of CDD was based on design elements put forth in the World Bank’s theoretical framework on this topic, where it was defined as :
Scaling up means more than physical scaling up (mass replication). It also means social scaling up (by increasing social inclusiveness) and conceptual scaling up (changing the mind-set and power relations).
Social scaling up can mean constant adaptations to improve the voice of the weak, or special targeted programs to supplement multisectoral ones.
Conceptual scaling up means going beyond the notion of CDD as a project approach, or even a program approach, and embedding empowerment in all thinking and action concerning development
In collaboration with other team members, I designed and offered a one-and-half day workshop to present the case review and analysis guidelines to consultants and World Bank Task Team Leaders and their teams, providing guidance for their application, and eliciting feedback from workshop participants. Following the workshop I incorporated productive comments and changes to the guidelines offered by workshop participants where appropriate.
World Bank Community and Local Development Conference December 2022
The workshop included presentation and discussion of the following topics:
Assessment of the current state of practice
Context factors
Obstacles
Political commitment
Decentralization elements
Community design elements
Stakeholder analysis
Local capacity
Participation depth
Functions and manuals
Knowledge management
Thinking through issues
Communication strategy
Scaling up features
Sector specific and technical CDD tools
Strategies used
Impact
Guidelines on use of checklists
Here are some samples of the research tools I prepared for this workshop:
SCALING UP CDD WORKSHOP
CHECKLIST 6: LOCAL ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY ANALYSIS
This comprehensive list of questions is useful for learning about the capacity of stakeholder organizations. Under the headings of functions, values, and processes, the following are covered: decision making; resource mobilization; communication and coordination; conflict management; effectiveness; accountability; sustainability; linkages to other organizations; and problem solving.
FUNCTIONS
Decision making:
How adequate is information on which decisions are based?
Quality of information that goes into making decisions (deliberation).
Whose views and interests determine what decisions will be made?
Breadth of participation, direct and indirect, in decision making.
When decisions are made, do they get implemented? If not, why not?
Effectiveness of follow-up and implementation (likelihood of impact).
Resource Mobilization:
How much and which resources are contributed by an organization’s members?
How has this changed over the past five years?
How much and which resources are obtained from other sources? Who is not contributing who might be expected to do so, and why not?
How well are the organization’s resources managed?
What evidence is there that the effectiveness and efficiency of resource management is increasing or decreasing?
Communication and Coordination:
Who is communicating with whom; how frequently, how fully, and with what effect?
What are the most important items of information that members and leaders
within the organizations should have from each other?
How broadly is this information disseminated within the respective groups?
What coordination of efforts results from communication?
Conflict Management:
What kinds of conflicts surface within the organization or with other organizations?
How, and how effectively, are these conflicts dealt with?
What learning and institutionalization have taken place for dealing with conflicts?
VALUES
Effectiveness:
What are the purposes of the organization?
What is it supposed to accomplish?
How well are these goals attained?
How cost-effective is the attainment of goals?
Accountability:
How, and how often, are leaders held responsible for decisions, resource management, etc.?
Are there open elections, free flow of information, opportunities to make inputs to decision making processes, and to vote on major policies and allocations?
Sustainability:
Has the organization successfully diversified into new activities?
How able has the organization been to maintain and increased funding?
How effective is facilities and equipment maintenance?
PROCESSES
Linkage:
With what organizations/institutions/publics has the organization been able to establish mutually productive exchange relationships?
What are the trends in the content of these linkages which exchange material resources, information, and political support, etc.?
What are the most important vertical and horizontal linkages?
How durable are these?
Problem Solving:
Whether, and to what extent, and with what effectiveness are the successive steps in problems solving gone through:
identification and prioritization of problems
information gathering, as much as needed (but not too much!)
consideration of alternative strategies and selection of the most promising
formulation and implementation of an action plan
subsequent review of progress involving the problems, wit appropriate modifications of the preceding steps for subsequent rounds of problems solving efforts until satisfactory results is obtained.
SCALING UP CDD WORKSHOP
CHECKLIST 11: THINKING THROUGH KEY POINTS OF SCALING UP
1) Country demand
Is there clear evidence of demand from one or more countries to scale-up an approach or
elements of an approach? Where is demand coming from, which stakeholders? Where does a particular experience fit in with and address wider pro-poor and sectoral priorities?
2) Nature of the approach or element of good practice – outcomes
What is to be or has been scaled up? Is it an entire approach (such as competitive grants for
agricultural research), or is it one or more elements, processes or techniques that contribute to an approach (such as participatory planning at community level)? Can these be expressed in clear desired or actual outcomes?
Are there several similar experiences but in different settings, by different agencies or sectors? Assessment may need to distinguish each experience and/or major outcome, particularly when comparing sectors.
3) Information about impact
This should be preferably described in relation to a baseline, even if roughly known, to understand the relative change involved. Negative impacts, and unexpected benefits are also relevant in drawing lessons. Target impact can help identify the relative scale of efforts needed in achieving significant change.
My workshop follow-up activities included providing support to field study consultants and conducting a Mexico field case study myself, (this is the subject of a forthcoming article).
Through the years CDD has continued to steadily grow. It is now known as Community and Local Development(CLD). The latest figures I have found (as of June 2022) showed 373 ongoing projects in 93 countries and $42.4 billion in active financing, representing 9% of overall World Bank lending.
Violeta Manoukian
If you work in community development I would love to hear about it – please do
not hesitate to call Violeta for free consultation.
Check out some of my other projects.
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