Earth Today | CDB responds to sustainability needs of community groups

THE CARIBBEAN Development Bank (CDB) will work to strengthen the capacity of community groups in the region, in response to findings from a recent pilot assessment, the latest phase of which was carried out in St Lucia.

Thirty-seven St Lucians, in seven community groups in seven communities, recently participated in the capacity assessment exercise carried out by CDB’s Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF) under its 10th Cycle.

This makes St Lucia the third country to be assessed under the CDB’s BNTF’s Pilot Beneficiary Group Capacity and Programme Assessment, which seeks to identify areas for strengthening the operations of each group to aid communities in pursuing sustainable local development. Earlier this year, 20 communities were assessed in Jamaica, and an additional eight in Guyana.

“It is key that the BNTF be more responsive – to include project beneficiaries more in project design and project implementation. That is a significant part of the reason why we are implementing a beneficiary assessment tool,” said George Yearwood, portfolio manager of the BNTF.

The BNTF Programme is the main vehicle of the CDB for pursuing direct poverty reduction in the Caribbean. It responds to needs identified by the most vulnerable communities in the priority areas of water and sanitation, education and livelihood enhancement, and access and drainage to improve the quality of life of beneficiaries in its nine participating countries.

The groups in the seven communities where assessments were carried out at the end of April were: Vieux Fort Comprehensive Secondary School; Soufriere Primary School; Babonneau Primary School; Goodlands East; Choiseul Music Committee; La Resource Development Committee; and Castries South East Constituency Council.

Speaking at a stakeholder meeting to share the findings, community development specialist at the CDB, Richardo Aiken, revealed that 96 per cent of the participating groups did not have the capacity to do project proposal writing. Roughly 86 per cent of the groups were not registered and did not have a constitution to guide the governance of the group. Further, about 74 per cent of participants were unaware of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their applicability to their organisations work.

“Successfully mapping the SDGs into the activities of the BNTF and within national plans produces four areas of improved project implementation for CDB and country partners,” explained Aiken. “These areas are: national planning, budgetary programmatic structure, performance evaluation system, and accounting harmonisation.”

For Brandon Antoine, deputy project manager at the BNTF office in St Lucia, the exercise was useful.

“The assessment shows some of the areas that we need to improve on, and we can incorporate some of these findings into the implementation of the current and future BNTF Cycles,” he said.

Based on the preliminary findings from all three countries, Aiken noted that the CDB’s BNTF would plan actions to respond to the emergent needs.