Community based rural development : Mahweit (OPG); evaluation report, 7/80

Special evaluation covers the period 5/79-6/80 and is based on a review of project documents, site visits, and interviews with (ex) project staff and project-related personnel. As a result of a 6/79 USAID/Y-STC special evaluation, the project was extensively redefined in 6/80, with new activities in training, outreach, and project management. Nonetheless, the project"s nutrition and women"s centers were forcefully closed in 2/80 by representatives of a community faction and STC staff left Mahweit on 4/26, 4 days before a deadline imposed by local political leadership. Under local pressure, the Governor had demanded that the project entirely finance a Mahweit sewer system. When STC rejected this demand as beyond the project"s means and scope, locals were incredulous, and asked for compliance or withdrawal of the "American project". The underlying problem seems to be that Mahweit lacked the very features - social homogeneity, common goals, and egalitarian ideals and institutions - presupposed by STC"s CBIRD philosophy. As a result, STC could not successfully develop processes rather than end products, involve the highly factionalized local community in the project, undertake several tasks simultaneously, expand women"s roles, or generate self-help activities, especially without help from the central government. Moreover, STC staff lacked the experience to adapt the CBIRD approach to the local context. The project"s very first output, a youth center, which had been built to satisfy a perceived need for concrete results, allied the project with one local faction. Later, disputes arose over programs for women, road projects which crossed private land, and finally, over water projects. (Five successful small water projects were, however, built in the outlying Charbi area). The attitude of the Governor and the local climate make resumption of the project in Mahweit town in any form highly unlikely. Government officials are willing, however, to allow resumption of the project in a modified form in Mahweit Province. A final option is to terminate the project at this juncture and reschedule the remaining funds.