Chia Se Vietnam Sweden Poverty Alleviation Program, Phase II

Chia se could be described as a pre-reform program aimed at showing a way to implement the decentralization policies of the Government nationwide, analyze the results obtained and communicate lessons learned to the public administration nation-wide. It also tried to influence all relevant Government entities towards applying a rights-based approach to poverty reduction.

The Chia sẻ approach to poverty alleviation can be briefly described as a way of empowering villagers to jointly manage a Local Development Fund (LDF), large enough to support investments that can improve the living conditions of the poor in a sustainable manner. Identification of poor households as well as setting development priorities were tasks decided by the village meeting convened by officials elected by the village. To maintain a democratic and transparent process for managing the LDF, investment decisions were taken by the village meeting.

Village investments covered a wide variety of sectors: Agriculture, Forestry, Livestock, Environment, Water and sanitation, Business development, Market development, Branding, Capacity building, Health, Education, Rural infrastructure, Roads, Aquaculture, Small scale industry, Agro-processing, Gender rights, Farmers organizations, Climate change mitigation, Social security and Social welfare, Vocational training, Farmer training, Irrigation, Electrification, Information, etc.

The positive outcome from Chia sẻ phase 1 motivated Government of Vietnam to solicit support for a second phase. Within the framework of the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy, the Public Administrative Reform and in particular National and Local planning through Socio Economic Development planning (SEDP) , the second phase has as its main target to develop ways of making the decentralized, rights-based methodology replicable Nation-wide. The third phase:

1. Consolidated the results achieved in the local areas
2. Developed and analyzed less expensive ways of successfully applying the same approach, making it replicable nation-wide
3. Made the results and the procedures behind these results well-known and communicated, for obtaining impact on Socio Economic Development planning, policy-making and application of already existing policies within the fields of poverty reduction, rural development, decentralization and grassroots democracy, thereby becoming part of the approach utilized by the public administration for these tasks at different levels.
4. Directly contributed to integrating the rights-based methods into the application of (1) the new rural policy framework named Tam Nong and its National Targeted Program, (2) provincial guidelines and decisions on a more decentralized, participatory SEDP planning, and (3) Nationally approved guidelines for participatory SEDP planning at commune level

The design of the Program was innovative and in 2012 and 2013 it continues without donor support and be based on Government of Vietnam resources only both on Province and National level.

ORGUT provided technical assistance and advice to the Ministry of Planning and Investments and the Provincial Peoples Committees in Ha Giang and Quang Tri in particular in developing and promoting the decentralized, rights-based approach to local governance. Specific fields covered were institution building, capacity building, result-based approach, result capture and M&E, strategic communication, high level policy analysis, strategy development, strategic environmental assessments, socio-economic analysis, production of information material, operations and maintenance and quality assurance.