Support to Plan of Operations for the Chia se Poverty Alleviation Program Phase II
Chia se can be described as a pre-reform program aiming at showing a way to implement the decentralization policies of the Government of Vietnam Nation-wide, analyze the results obtained and communicate lessons learned to the public administration nation-wide. 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.
The second phase:
- Consolidated the results achieved in the local areas
- Developed and analyzed less expensive ways of successfully applying the same approach, making it replicable nation-wide
- 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.
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.
The Chia sẻ phase 2 can be divided into two periods: A first period up to end of July 2011 with strong support from Sweden and a contracted Technical Assistance firm. The second period up to 2013 will rely entirely on the resources of the Government of Vietnam. A need to support particularly capacity building with outside (donor) funding was identified and a mapping exercise for donor interest and Vietnamese institutional capacity had been undertaken.
The Program Document was unspecific on the content of Chia sẻ 2 from July 2011 and the two years ahead. The funding issue remained to be solved both for GoV funds and possible donor support. Therefore, Program management identified a need to start a process to develop a Plan of Operation or similar for the remaining period of Chia sẻ 2 after July 2011. As a first step a draft content following LFA needed to be developed along with a plan for the planning process itself.
While, most of the planning process was supported by the ORGUT long term technical assistance, there was an initial need to enforce the team with a program planning specialist.