http://www.mercycorps.org The Latest Mercy Corps Georgia Content en-us (c) 2007 Mercy Corps http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Fri, 16 May 2008 15:59:01 -0700 Charity Mercy Corps In-house CMS 60 http://www.mercycorps.org/images/donate/mercy_logo_red.gif http://www.mercycorps.org/ 136 48 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/1265/ The village of Sovkhoz Samgorski is focusing on its newly-rebuilt school as a hopeful symbol of its future. Fri, 05 May 2006 11:07:28 -0700 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/556/ Enormous floods have engulfed large parts of Georgia, destroying communities and displacing families. Mercy Corps needs your help to mount a rapid response. Wed, 04 May 2005 06:42:17 -0700 http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/education/380/ Sofa has changed since the days when she had to beg on the streets in order to eat. Wed, 16 Jun 2004 06:08:06 -0700 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/310/ A key element of successful community mobilization is the level to which the community gains and maintains the sense of power and ability to work on their own problems by mobilizing resources both from within or by partnering with other institutions and groups. As we approach community mobilization projects it is important to remember that we are capable of disempowering the community if we are not careful about we use the resources at our disposal. How we approach community mobilization projects illustrates how we work on development in general. The key elements in community development are: (a) the respect of differences and experiences between "the development agency" and the "client community", (b) acknowledgement of resources each party brings to the process and (c) the clear division of the responsibilities and accountability of each of the parties. It is important that we become critical while using the term "beneficiary" - once we start thinking about the people we work with as beneficiaries, we have set up a power dynamic that is conducive to true development. Mercy Corps, as well as many other agencies, "does" community mobilization. What makes Mercy Corps efforts original are some of the approaches that I witnessed in our Georgia model, such as: 1. Presentation of the project to the community, and allowing the community to decide if they want to participate or not. It demonstrates our respect for THEIR vision of their community development, as in the end it really belongs to them only. 2. Budget allocation - this is perhaps revolutionary in "community mobilization" - actually giving the money to the community, or an informal community committee, to manage and to procure goods and /or services necessary to complete the project. Many NGOs use a more traditional approach, choosing to do the procurement themselves, because they believe that this minimizes the misuse of the funds - but it also minimizes the effect on the mobilization and distorts the power relationship. 3. Financial community participation - when the community invests financial resources (or sell their chicken to raise the money for the community project) they have a vested interest in overseeing the spending of their (and donated) resources by their representatives. This makes them the best financial monitors possible and also sets a stage for expectations of financial accountability by their governments (local or national). Hence, we do not only facilitate the community mobilization, but also participatory governance and citizen's expectations/demand for accountability and transparency. 4. Transparency seems to be a key element here, and by transparency I mean transparency of the process, the resources and the results. The posting of the project budget and financial reports (by the community committee) in public places is another approach unique to this project. Mercy Corps' challenge is how we apply our accountability and transparency in practice and to which degree we implement the principles we expect from our partners and clients. The critical moment in the communities' sense of ownership over the process, and hence, the true mobilization, started after we began to change our approach and stopped treating community members as "beneficiaries" that provide volunteer labor as a community counterpart for the construction of houses. Rather, we started looking at them as "equal" participants in the process, understanding that they have the most vested interest in the quality of construction and thus "sharing" the control over the resources and the end result (in this case, the house). In a country where 48% of the population live below poverty line and the rural poor have for years been dependant on foreign aid for survival, we are only beginning to pave the road to the mobilization that would survive not only this project, but would make the communities more equal partners in the future. Mon, 17 Nov 2003 08:34:09 -0800 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/313/ Community Development is the process of social change, a community (as a social unit) will develop over time by itself and an outsider will not be able to develop a community. Community Mobilization is the process of stimulating, encouraging and guiding members of the community; as an outsider one is a catalyst and stimulant to the Community Development process. Community Mobilization is a process, which will lead to a community's development. The Community Mobilization approach builds on the community's capacities, skills and assets, instead of the community's problems. The situation will vary from community to community; nevertheless, there are common elements and problems. One of the very important challenges in the process of Community Mobilization is the large contribution from the donor agency. Donor agencies want to help, while community members want to receive. However, bringing in outside resources contributes to the dependency syndrome and reduces the chance for a project to be sustainable and a community to be self-reliant. The only solution is to use the donor funds as a hook for community mobilization and work very carefully on incorporating and highlighting the community's internal resources. Program staff should always remember that the community is full of possibilities and creative ideas. Many of the capacities in a community are not recognized. One of the main tasks of a Community Mobilizer is to help the community find these assets and ideas and build relationships within the community to enable the mobilization and utilization of these assets. Participation is a key element of mobilization and good mobilization ensures a high level of participation in resource identification, decision-making, prioritizing problems and finding creative solutions to address these problems. Everyone who has worked in community mobilization agrees that the beginning of the process is quite challenging. In Georgia, during the Soviet era, problem identification and resolution was the business of specialists. The opinions of ordinary people were not considered seriously. It is very difficult to change the behavior of people who have never been required or asked to participate in the decision-making process, regardless of their education or social status, even if these decisions directly affected their daily life. However, all these challenges become much more problematic for a Community Mobilizer who works with ‘winner communities' (communities identified by a donor for different reasons - our case along the BP/SCP pipeline). In this case people have huge expectations, they revert back to Soviet times when ‘somebody' (i.e. government) took all the responsibilities for decision-making and problem solving. In our experience many communities initially refused to participate, were usually unhappy with the amount of funding the donor was contributing and they refused to contribute labor, materials or cash. The techniques used to overcome this problem were 1) patience-work with each community trying to show the benefit of participation 2) cross visits-site visits to successful community projects and 3) step by step-slowly involving more and more community members into process. By incorporating these techniques we have been able to get the support of 24 of the 25 communities we are working with in the Community Investment Program-East (CIP-E) project. We will continue to utilize these techniques and eventually the 25th community will also start to participate in the program. Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:53:13 -0800 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/290/ Thirsty for a better life, community members in Marabda worked together to repair a damaged canal and to bring drinking water to their village. Mon, 25 Aug 2003 07:39:03 -0700 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/283/ Under the East Georgia Community Mobilization Initiative (E-GCMI), Mercy Corps provides grants and capacity building to local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This capacity building happens though a combination of training, exchanges and sharing. At the start of the project Mercy Corps had an agreement with a local training organization to provide the capacity building. Later in the program, NGOs were given the opportunity to select training courses themselves based on their individual needs, though it was decided to make one course mandatory (Civil Society and Role of NGOs) for all NGOs. MC provides them with information about local training providers and NGOs propose the courses they need. To increase the sense of ownership among NGOs a training line-item was added to their grant budgets, under which they can request money after MC has approved the training course. This change in approach has increased their interest in various training courses. In several cases we have supported NGOs attendance at international conferences in their respective sectors, which helped them establish contacts, bring information and disseminate it to others working in the same area. Periodically MC organizes cross-regional visits for sub-grantees. They are grouped on the bases of sectors they work in. The aim is to give them the opportunity to visit other NGOs, share experiences and lessons learned as well as establish linkages across the regions. NGOs are also given the opportunity to obtain individual consultations on specific issues. Finally, one of the most important factors for NGOs from regions with limited experience is the knowledge they gain during the process of project implementation itself, since MC maintains close contacts with NGOs and provides hands-on assistance in their activities. Several mechanisms are used for evaluating the impact of capacity building: 1. An organizational assessment form, which is filled out by MC Grants Officers at the beginning of the NGO project implementation, and at the end of the project or after six months, whichever is later. The assessment form is developed so that both survey results are kept on the same page. This allows Grants Officers to easily see and compare the results. The filled forms are kept in individual project files. Periodically, respective Grants Officers summarize the major changes they come across most often and write a short report on the main points. This helps to identify the weakest points for NGOs in order to assist them to correctly select training programs, and in a more general sense, to modify capacity building program to better meet NGOs' needs. 2. A separate "impact evaluation" survey was recently implemented using a questionnaire to survey the sample group of NGOs and to generalize the impact of MC's provision of community services, training and technical assistance through sub-grants to local NGOs/CBOs. During this process the impact was evaluated against success indicators, one of which was: Improved capacity of NGOs to implement projects. The form is rather simple, concentrating on major issues, i.e. organizational structure, administrative/financial/procurement systems; and program management, external relations and community participation. Major points of the results received through the above mentions mechanisms include: NGOs that had never before received grants reported that although each had done some previous activities, only through the project did they realized their role as an NGO. It will be too much to say that all of them now are "strong" organizations, although now they do pay more attention to organizational issues. Filing systems have significantly improved and they have a better understanding of monitoring. Often though, many NGOs still do not have enough staff or a clear strategy for the future (or at least it is not easy for them to talk about their strategy clearly). NGOs reported that they became more focused in their activities, especially realistically considering their abilities and experience. Increased attention is paid to external relations (working with government, other NGOs, etc.) and increase of quality of services/products. One NGO, for example, reported they became more focused on women's and gender issues. Many NGOs' find MC's grant becomes a good "visit card" for them in relations with other international and donor organizations. There have been many cases when former MC grantees received funding from other donors working in Georgia, i.e. World Bank, Eurasia Foundation, etc. All of the organizations surveyed confirmed improvement in their financial systems. Even those for whom MC's grant was not the first stated that MC's financial reporting mechanism and assistance in financial issues was especially helpful. This helped them with financial reporting with other donors and some even used these forms for reporting to other donors. One significant change noticed in most of the cases was increased community participation in NGO projects. Each RFA issued by MC required community participation. Initially this was one reason for including this point in all the NGO projects, but later community support became viewed as one of the factors of sustainability of project activities. Eventually this had a dual effect: NGOs' activities become more transparent and the community becomes more involved as well as united around the issue. NGOs' images have improved and they obtained trust among their communities. Very often communities come to them asking assistance in various issues. If communities participate, they also become more responsible for preserving achieved results. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 10:10:33 -0700 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/284/ Empowering communities to solve their own problems and act as agents of social change is one of the main aims of the East Georgia Community Mobilization Initiative. Two tools have been developed to monitor and assess the program. So far they show success in changing attitudes and increasing capacity for action, but also the challenges in predicting sustainability. Since the program began in 2000 over 190 communities have organized and elected Community Initiative Groups (CIGs) and implemented over 260 projects with input from their members, the government, the private sector and Mercy Corps. Mercy Corps facilitates an initial action planning workshop, where resources are identified and priorities selected, and provides capacity building training and support in project design, proposal writing, budgeting and financial management. After the implementation of the first project, the CIGs become more independent, and other skill areas such as conflict resolution, leadership and advocacy, become the focus of support. Before approval of a third phase project, communities are required to have carried out activities without Mercy Corps resources and demonstrating that they are pro-actively including the needs of the most vulnerable in their projects. A central principle of the process is transparency, which is promoted through the participation and inclusion of a broad spectrum of the population and public display of information about project including budgets and expenditures. This is necessary in minimizing actual and perceived corruption and generating trust, which in turn facilitates greater participation and community ownership. To monitor this process, two tools have been developed. The first tool is to be used by the Mercy Corps regional teams during three-month planning meetings to identify examples of positive, negative and no change in mobilized communities. Regional representatives identified various indicators of expected change: The examples are discussed in detail and actions to promote positive change in other communities or prevent and resolve negative examples are included in three-month plans. The information also provides useful anecdotes for senior manager's understanding, reports and strategy planning. It is a quick, simple tool that encourages program staff to initiate discussion on a wide variety of program issues and share the challenges they are facing in a non-threatening way. The indicators can be refined and new dimensions examined as the program develops. The second tool examines in-depth the empowerment impacts of the program, based on breaking down the concept into a number of categories, which are explored through a semi structured interview with the CIG and community members. It was developed as part of a mid term evaluation of the empowerment impacts of the program and is now being used by mobilizers to evaluate the community mobilization process at the end of the third phase project. The categories are: 1. Moods and Attitudes such as hope, confidence and belief that something can be changed; creating an atmosphere that supports ongoing action. 2. Human Capital means the skills, knowledge and understanding community members have: improved human capital increases the community's potential to take action and empower themselves. 3. Institutional Capacities includes the existence of legitimate leadership and institutional structures, and modes of organisation including networking: institutional capacity increases the efficiency and coherence with which a community can respond to its own situation and make use of resources to do so. 4. Community Cohesion means factors such as trust, unity, altruism and shared values: the presence of these factors enables communities to act for the common good whilst respecting differences, and channel energies towards mutually beneficial goals. 5. Political Agency means having knowledge and belief in authorities, and access to them, as well as those authorities responding to communities' interests: in so far as power rests with governments, community members need to have a meaningful relationship with them in order to maximize their own power. 6. Shared Material Assets such as roads, buildings, equipment and land: where communities have shared assets, and reasonable access to them, these can serve as resources for collective action. 7. Information Flow such as the presence and accessibility of sources of information, equipment for receiving it, and spaces and opportunities for communication: information is vital to participating in society and taking optimum decisions, and communications nourish the community's relationships with itself and with society. Although the tool requires strong analytical skills, the mobilizers already have deep knowledge of the communities where they work, and the training and support required to effectively use this tool is useful for their understanding of the process that they are engaged in. So far, these tools have found the project has made major achievements in changing perceptions and attitudes, and increasing capacities for action. The challenge for the program is increasing political agency in the context of weak and corrupt government and poor enabling environment, while the challenge for the monitoring system is predicting whether the empowerment impacts achieved so far can be sustained in the long term. Fri, 25 Jul 2003 08:08:13 -0700 http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/peacefulchange/205/ Mercy Corps launches Community Investment Project in Georgia to promote sustainable social and economic development along planned pipeline route. Sat, 01 Mar 2003 11:09:56 -0800 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/198/ A program in Georgia is helping disabled citizens to learn new skills and to gain acceptance in society. Wed, 12 Feb 2003 06:44:45 -0800 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/195/ Residents in Tsira come together to improve their village. Thu, 30 Jan 2003 07:37:28 -0800 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/175/ A project to deliver water to its village has left people in Tskordza, Georgia thirsting for more community projects. Tue, 12 Nov 2002 06:36:55 -0800 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/164/ With financial support from Mercy Corps, a community in Georgia undertake a project to improve their environment and quality of life. Mon, 21 Oct 2002 06:24:17 -0700 http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/peacefulchange/163/ A Mercy Corps sponsored program is helping disabled children in Georgia gain acceptance in society Thu, 17 Oct 2002 07:16:56 -0700 http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/georgia/41/ USAID has awarded a $13.5 million grant to Mercy Corps intended to improve social services and strengthen communities in eastern Georgia. Thu, 21 Sep 2000 11:32:41 -0700