Afghan National Solidarity Programme - Implementing The NSP

Implementing The NSP

NGOs act as facilitating partners contracted by the MRRD to initiate the NSP and provide technical and capacity building support to the communities. The MRRD has developed an operational manual and facilitating partners that are contracted utilize it for community implementation. The facilitating partners serve many different roles in NSP implementations including training social community organizers tasked with educating the community about NSP, engaging community facilitators, providing technical assistance in designing and building infrastructure, providing election experts to implement CDC elections and assisting with the monitoring and evaluation of projects.

An NSP project cycle for a community is broken down into 5 steps and usually takes 2 years to complete. First the NSP facilitating partner is assigned to the province by contracting through the MRRD. The facilitating partner then contacts the community to inform them of the NSP and commence the community mobilization process. In the second step, the facilitating partner is responsible for initiating a fair and transparent election process to elect members of the locally governing community development council (CDC). The CDCs are elected through a process of identifying the eligible voters in a community, creating a cluster of approximately 25 families and ensuring at least 80% of the cluster votes for representatives. The elected CDC members then decide on the CDC president, deputy, secretary and treasurer. Thirdly, the newly elected CDCs consult directly with members of the community to reach a consensus list of subproject ideas. This list called the community development plan (CDP) comprises projects which can be carried out with funds from the NSP and independent of outside support. The subprojects which require NSP funding are then submitted by the CDC to the MRRD and the Oversight Consultant in a proposal. The facilitating partner is responsible for training the CDC members in project proposal writing, accounting and procurement. In the fourth step, if the proposal is approved, NSP block grants are disbursed to cover the purchase of materials. Arriving in installments the funds are also used for subproject implementation. The CDC continues to report to MRRD and to the community about the project‘s implementation process and budget. Lastly, the facilitating partners and CDCs undertake an evaluation of the technical quality of completed subprojects and documents the lessons learned.