SCF community based integrated rural development (CBIRD) : OPG phase II

PES covers the period 9/81-3/84 and is based on an attached special evaluation (XD-AAP-619-A). The SCF has successfully implemented a number of CBIRD subprojects (SP"s) with favorable impact on several poor communities; in most cases beneficiaries (over 450 community members) have been involved in all stages of SP planning, implementation, and management. Although SCF has collaborated closely with GOT regional and local officials and with other institutions in CBIRD activities and has partially achieved its informal demonstration training objectives, the GOT with its highly centralized bureacracy has been unreceptive to formal training efforts and no training curricula have been developed. The project has also been hampered by limited SCF staff technical capacity, too few SCF staff at certain periods, and frequent turnover of SCF field directors. Lessons learned are that the CBIRD methodology: should not necessarily be institutionalized through highly centralized public or governmental structures (which are characterized by a rigid, bottom-down development approach); and is not appropriate for all community development problems. Action decisions are to: complete unfinished SP"s; continue phasing out SCF activity in successful SP"s; establish an ongoing system of SP monitoring and evaluation; publicize CBIRD methodology and successes more broadly; undertake a feasibility study toward creating a permanent, self-managing Tunisian PVO to institutionalize CBIRD on a long-term basis; and concentrate future actions in geographic zones amenable to the CBIRD approach.