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Mendayim Suyunbai Kyzy is a 20-year-old resident of Kashka-Terek village in southwestern Kyrgyzstan. Rural communities there often are conservative and remote, and as a young woman, Mendayim wasn’t very knowledgeable about government operations, or engaged in community-wide civic activities.
“I didn’t know anything about what was going on, or how to get involved,” she says simply.
However, that changed when Kyrgyzstan announced the construction of massive new power lines as part of CASA-1000, an international initiative designed to link the energy systems of Central and South Asia — Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with Afghanistan and Pakistan — and enable trading of electricity.
To assure that residents who live along the route of the power lines benefit, rather than suffer a reduced quality of life, the World Bank initiated a community-support program that it hopes will be a model of benefit-sharing for other large infrastructure projects in the region. The support program offers grants and technical assistance for community improvements related to the electricity supply, social “infrastructure” and livelihood generation. A requirement, however, is that the decisions making is within the community and not made centrally.
“At the World Bank, community-driven development is all about decision-making by the people for the people. Beneficiaries must be consulted both during project preparation and implementation,” explains Luiza Nora, senior social development specialist.
It’s all about community members making decisions by themselves. Across Central Asia, communities want to participate in decision-making. I live here, so I hear their ‘voice.’ Damira Temirbaeva, social development specialist for the World Bank
Fortunately, in Kyrgyzstan, the World Bank found a willing partner in the government.
“While the World Bank mandates that projects engage with beneficiaries, most project staff members are either reluctant or go along just to ‘check the box,’” says Luiza. “But in the Kyrgyz Republic, they really embraced the idea, even though it was somewhat new to them, to open up everything. They are proud of what’s been accomplished so far and really want it to work.”
The implementing agency in this case is ARIS, which has a focus of reducing rural poverty. In October 2020, the ARIS-coordinated community development initiative kicked off in Mendayim’s village with a meeting in which youth were strongly encouraged to attend.
“I was invited,” Mendayim recalls. “I was a little concerned at first, because I wondered if the other villagers would hear me out, given my young age and my lack of knowledge and experience. But I liked it! I noticed how the others had high expectations for the project and their confidence was contagious. Since then, I have been trained in how to work with people, and now I am much less fearful. I’ve become fully engaged!”
“Fully engaged” means helping with coordination and outreach during each of the four stages of the community-development initiative.
Engaging all stakeholders
Daniyar Ashiraliev, community support project and social mobilization specialist for ARIS, explains that activities kick off with an awareness-raising campaign that includes roundtables at the oblast (province), district, rural subdistrict and village levels. The purpose is to share an overview of the CASA-1000 community support project and explain its importance to the social and economic development of the region.
In the second phase, local volunteers are elected, with an emphasis on young people and women. It was at a village recruitment meeting that Mandiyem was introduced to the effort.
She and others act as “community reporters” who reach out to other residents to help complete an assessment of existing resources and perceived electrical, social and economic needs.
“One of the advantages of this assessment is that, for the first time, we’re creating documentation of a territory’s infrastructure and its needs,” says Damira. “Now, whenever another donor talks to ARIS, they can say, ‘The World Bank is paying for electricity, please fund a school or a medical center.’ It’s also critical for their own local planning.”
Focus group discussions come next, during which residents develop a prioritized shortlist of projects based on community needs. These are followed by a vote. (There are three cycles of this process: once for electrical projects, a second time for social infrastructure and a third for economic initiatives.) The discussion and voting stages were always hindered by low participation rates due to limitations on people’s ability and desire to show up in person. Fifty people at a meeting was considered good. But when COVID hit, the problem became pressing.”
Introducing: digital participation
“The World Bank tries to make sure that every project involves its beneficiaries in some way in decision-making. But only since the pandemic have we resorted to digital platforms,” says Pietro Fiorentini, social development consultant for the World Bank. “One of the dynamics in this sort of organization is that it often comes down to individual champions, within certain departments, to push for change. Before COVID, Luiza’s predecessor was interested in pursuing online engagement, but it was always discarded; it was preferred to conduct community consultations in person in public spaces. But the pandemic opened up new opportunities because it forced teams to do something else.”
Pietro was tasked with researching the available online civic tools.
“We faced multiple challenges early on. For example, people are naturally skeptical whenever you introduce something new. And sometimes, ministries or implementing agencies were already too stretched and had limited capacity,” explains Pietro.
In his research, he says, he noticed the difference between civic engagement tools and civic engagement platforms. There are a lot of online tools, like Survey Monkey, Ushahidi, Tindie, You Record and SeeClickFix. And then there's online platforms, which include several interconnected tools that promote ongoing, two-way engagement.
“We opted for the comprehensive route so implementation teams don't have to use multiple tools and their data isn’t fragmented,” says Pietro. “We chose Your Priorities (developed by the Citizens Foundation) mainly for its ease of use and flexibility.”
Another challenge Pietro says he often encounters with partner governments and organizations is the need to understand that “these platforms are not websites. Ministries or implementation units often approach them initially as a website where they just publish information. A website only provides information; it doesn't enable two-way engagement between beneficiaries and the implementation unit. A platform is also about seeking feedback, engaging communities, prioritizing events, and so on.”
Pietro notes that typically “there has to be a lot of hand holding during the initial phase, even one year on,” when a new technology platform is introduced. That’s why, at the beginning of the Your Priorities introduction, he says “there was a lot of initial skepticism both within the World Bank and outside. Everyone’s overstretched and lacking in capacity. It’s hard to make time for training and to appoint someone to care for and manage a platform.” However, Your Priorities has been very easy to deploy. “It's sort of like an Ikea cupboard. You have all the pieces and can set it up quickly. I've developed the platform in one day, and probably within a week it can be operational for specific tasks.”
Another advantage is that Your Priorities is open source. The cloud version can be used for free, or it can be tweaked. The ARIS team has wholeheartedly embraced it, and has contracted with the foundation for additional technical support.
“For us, it was a rather new approach. But we got used to it quickly with the help of the consultants.” Daniyar
ARIS’ technical experts even have integrated the agency’s management information system into the platform, so they can now pull in all the data they want. All of the content can be exported either as an Excel sheet, CSV file or Word document, which makes it easier to analyze it.
In addition, the Your Priorities interface was customized to incorporate the ARIS brand colors and logo, a welcome video message from the agency team, and a link to the main ARIS website.
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