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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 Program 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 three 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. The results of the work were documented in
a formal report to the United Nations.
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