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Poverty Alleviation in Kenya
United Nations DDSMS
The purpose of this project was to provide substantive
input for the design of a multi-million dollar Programme Support
Document on Poverty Alleviation and the Environment. The project
worked under two key assumptions: 1) people living in poverty (and
grassroots organisations that represent them) have significant but
under-utilised ideas for alleviating poverty; and 2) a decision
making system for the funding and management of projects needs to
receive full political buy-in from all stakeholders, including grassroots
organisations, local government, and central government.
The ESSA team visited two of Kenya's poorest
provinces and conducted dozens of interviews with local women's
groups, churches, environmental NGOs, and community development
officers. The team then invited some of these people to attend a
large workshop in Nairobi to discuss the issue of local/national
communication with senior officers in the central government.
The result of the interviews and workshop was
the development of a number of draft project ideas by local people,
a jointly developed decision making structure, a draft financial
management structure, and the beginnings of buy-in by local and
national stakeholders. A final report was submitted to the UN in
early 1998.
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