Community based rural development: reducing rural poverty from the ground up

This article investigates Community Based Rural Development, which is an approach to reducing rural poverty that promotes collective action by communities and puts them in control of development interventions by making community based organizations (CBOs) driving forces in the process.<B>Conclusions:</B>CBOs directly manage most project resources. CBRD has the potential to make the allocation of resources more responsive to the needs of the poor, to lead to more sustainable outcomes, and to empower poor communities to negotiate with government, the private sector, and civil society.CBRD is particularly effective in the rural context because it deals directly with the challenges faced by rural people. By promoting participatory approaches CBRD can give the politically marginalized rural poor a voice in both in their community and with government entities.By supporting decentralized decision-making and shifting responsibility for delivering services to the local level, CBRD also overcomes some of the costs and difficulties of operating in spatially dispersed rural populations.The CBRD approach can also be used to support local activities that inject resources directly into the local economy, increase local level opportunity in rural areas, enhance revenues available for local development and diversify rural household income.The international evidence presented in this paper clearly shows and demonstrates how a community based approach to rural development can greatly enhance the quality of life in rural areas, and how it can be used effectively to reduce poverty. Design details are clearly important.Several important components combine to form successful community-based rural development approaches. Communities are central to the process, making decisions over subprojects, setting-up their own accounts, accessing funds from a variety of sources (own, government, and non-governmental), managing and implementing projects. CBOs work collaboratively with a host of other stakeholders especially local and intermediate governments, NGOs, and the local private sector.Sustainability, mainstreaming, and replicability of CBRD are achieved through links with governments and the private sector. The first link creates sustainability and allows for mainstreaming of local infrastructure, other local public goods, and social sectors such as primary education. Public fundsprovide critical long-term budgetary support and/or start-up public investments, even where CBOs commit to the financing or managing the longer term operation and maintenance costs of the created asset. The link to the private sector is crucial for productive subprojects and other income generating activities as these are likely to disintegrate unless market access is fostered.